The Department of Health on Sunday disclosed that an American woman who visited the Philippines last January was infected with the Zika virus.
Health Secretary Janette Garin said that the US Center for Disease Control informed her that the US resident had developed Zika symptoms from Jan. 2 to Jan. 18 before returning to America.
The US center said the patient was described as a “non-pregnant adult” who reportedly got sick last week in the country.
Following the confirmation of the case, Philippines and US authorities traced and visited the places where the patient had gone and conducted measures to prevent and control the virus.
The DoH assured the US that there is no outbreak of the Zika virus in the Philippines and there is absolutely no reason to panic.
Garin said the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine had activated five other government hospitals and laboratories for Zika virus testing.
The hospitals are: Baguio General Hospital, Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center in Cebu City, Southern Philippines Medical Center in Davao, Lung Center of the Philippines in Quezon City, and San Lazaro Hospital in Manila.
Garin also said the DoH continues to study the virus and ways to prevent its entry into the country.
She said they have started training several hospitals on how to detect possible Zika cases using new machine testing kits.
Symptoms of the Zika disease include rashes, fever for more that two days, conjunctivitis and muscle weakness.
Garin also stressed the importance of keeping the surroundings clean to stop the virus-carrying mosquitoes from breeding.
She advised women not to get pregnant in 2016 to avoid contracting the virus linked to birth defects since the mosquito-borne Zika virus continues to rapidly spread across Latin America.