4th Zika case in Vietnam is German woman

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Vietnam’s Health Ministry on Thursday said the female traveler who was diagnosed with the mosquito-borne Zika virus while recently in Japan is not Vietnamese but German.

She has recovered and has come back to work in District 2 in Ho Chi Minh City, the ministry said.

Health officials in the district where the woman lives have been directed to apply necessary monitoring and preventive measures.

Japan Times on September 12 quoted Japanese health ministry official Shoji Miyagawa as saying that the woman, who is in her 40s, was stung by a mosquito in Vietnam. She experienced a headache and rashes on her body on September 5 before coming to Japan on September 8.

Because she also suffered from other symptoms, including pain in her joints and pink eye, she visited a hospital on September 9, and a public health center in Tokyo confirmed her infection the following day.

She is the 11th Zika case in Japan since 2013 and the fourth in Vietnam.

From April to early August, Vietnam confirmed three cases of the Zika virus in Ho Chi Minh City, Nha Trang and the central province of Phu Yen.

Zika is primarily spread by mosquitoes but can also be transmitted through unprotected sex with an infected person. A case of suspected transmission through a blood transfusion in Brazil has raised questions about other ways it may be spread, according to Reuters.

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