On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that 157 pregnant women in the United States and 122 in its territories (predominantly in Puerto Rico) had tested positive for the Zika Virus. Fewer than 12 of these women have had miscarriages or babies born with defects, according to Reuters.
CDC previously reported cases of Zika where pregnant women had experienced symptoms as well as a positive test result, but experts say that women don’t necessarily have to have symptoms for their pregnancies to be at risk.
“As the data accumulated about the risk of asymptomatic infections, it seemed more and more important to be very transparent and share publicly the numbers, the full number of pregnant women at risk of adverse outcomes associated with Zika,” said chief of the CDC’s birth defects branch Margaret Honein on a press call, according to NPR.
In its report, the CDC acknowledged that the data could be limited, since there could be pregnant women who have the virus who haven’t been tested, and only select states are included in the U.S. Zika Pregnancy Registry and the Zika Active Pregnancy Surveillance System, which monitors cases.
Earlier this week, the Senate approved a compromise bill that would put $1.1 billion of the $1.9 billion requested by the White House to combatting the virus.
Image via AP.