The Zika virus outbreak

Guests: Jeffrey Shaman, Peter Hotez

The Zika virus is spreading “explosively” the WHO said last week, announcing they would convene an emergency meeting to figure out how to slow transmission. Thirty-one cases of the mosquito-borne infection have turned up in the United States. The mosquito-borne virus has infected hundreds of thousands of people in Latin America and the Caribbean and is being blamed for thousands of cases of the rare birth defect, microcephaly, in which the baby’s head and brain are abnormally small. This has prompted the CDC to issue a travel warning for pregnant women or women of child-bearing age for 14 countries. Several Latin American nations are also advising women to postpone pregnancy for two years. Joining us to talk about the Zika virus is JEFFREY SHAMAN,  associate professor of environmental health sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and PETER HOTEZ, Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine and professor of pediatrics and molecular virology & microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine.