Fear mounts as Brazil confirms third Zika virus-linked death

A third person has died as a result of contracting the mosquito-borne Zika virus, Brazil’s health ministry has confirmed.

A 20-year-old woman died 12 days after she was admitted to hospital in the northeastern state of Rio Grande do Norte with respiratory problems. Initially, medical staff thought she had contracted the Dengue virus which is transmitted by the same Aedes aegypti mosquito.

But tests for this more fatal disease which kills hundreds in Brazil each year, proved negative, leading to the patient being positively tested for Zika.

The country’s officials say they are “extremely concerned” at the development as Zika was previously thought to be fatal only in very rare cases. But a third death linked to the virus has left researchers facing the possibility that it presents a more serious risk to those infected with it than previously thought.

Brazilian authorities say they have already alerted the World Health Organisation about the fatalities. The first person to die was a man already suffering from lupus, which doctors believe left his immune system already vulnerable when he caught Zika. But the second death was of a young woman who had been in good health until contracting the disease.

Health experts are also seeking to confirm a link between the rapid spread of Zika in Brazil and a spike in the number of babies born in Brazil with microcephaly, a neurodevelopmental disorder that causes new infants to have abnormally small heads because the brain fails to grow normally.

The New England Journal of Medicine has published a study of a 25-year-old European woman infected with Zika in Brazil while pregnant last year which it says demonstrates the link between Zika and microcephaly. The report says the case study "shows severe fetal brain injury associated with ZIKV [Zika virus] infection".

About 4,000 suspected cases of microcephaly in Brazil are being examined but already some experts say that number has been over-inflated. The country’s health ministry said on Tuesday 404 cases had been confirmed while another 709 suspected cases had been ruled out as not microcephaly.

Many questions surround the presumed link between Zika and microcephaly. Though the virus has spread across South and Central America and the Caribbean there is yet to be any similar spike in microcephaly cases in other countries to compare to that witnessed in Brazil.

Meanwhile, Brazilian researchers have re-examined data gathered in a study of 100,000 newborn babies in the northeastern state of Paraíba which was carried out before the spread of Zika. They say their findings indicate that cases of microcephaly in the region might have been under-reported, raising the possibility one or a combination of other factors might be behind the spike in the disorder.