As we continue to learn more about Zika virus, concern about the health of pregnant women and their unborn babies is growing.
When it comes to Zika and how serious it really is, it depends on who you’re looking at.
For the general population, Zika can be a relatively mild illness. In fact, 80 percent of those infected don’t even know they have it. Among pregnant women, Zika can be devastating. For months we’ve been hearing about microcephaly, which is a serious birth defect where baby's heads are significantly smaller.
"The most vulnerable period is the first trimester," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, with the National Institutes of Health. "However you’re not home free once you get past the first trimester because we’ve seen issues that have arisen when women were infected in the second and even some into the third trimester."
Fauci says those late-term issues can include blindness, deafness, or developmental impairments. He says microcephaly is just one of the many manifestations and it likely receives the most attention because it is the most obvious.
"There are a number of subtle abnormalities that can occur and that if you get infected later on, since the brain is mostly developed, you might have modest negative effect on the brain," he said.
