Low Zika Virus Prevalence in Pregnant Women Tested in New York

Daniel Eiras, MD, MPH, hospital epidemiologist at NYU Langone Medical Center, talks about prevalence of Zika in pregnant women in New York.

Interview Transcript (slightly modified for readability)

“Of the close to 500 patients that we screened for Zika, very few actually tested positive, less than 1%. It’s not clear why this is, it’s possible that most of the patients that we evaluated, at least early on, were Americans [who] were traveling on vacation and did not reside in Central and South America, and so their risk of exposure was actually quite low.

We also identified that the area in the hospital, or in the health system, that was most affected was really the outpatient obstetrics offices. We can target our resource allocation and education to those areas.”