There was no need to panic over the identification of the first three Zika virus cases in India, the head of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said Sunday, according to dpa. India reported its first laboratory-confirmed Zika virus infections on May 15, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in an alert on its website Friday. One case was of a 64-year-old man detected in January 2016, another was a 34-year-old woman who had just delivered a healthy baby in November 2016 and a third was another pregnant woman aged 22 in January 2017. All three were in the Bapunagar area of the western city of Ahmedabad. "All three cases have recovered, there is no need for panic," ICMR chief Soumya Swaminathan said. She said none of the three patients had a history of overseas travel and the infection was most likely acquired locally. "They were caught in our surveillance and all health measures were taken." The ICMR had tested 34,233 human and 12,647 mosquito samples for the presence of Zika virus. Of these, close to 500 mosquitos samples were collected from Bapunagar area and were found negative for Zika.
