Zika Virus News and Updates: Girl With Zika Virus Is Born at a New Jersey Hospital

New Jersey: A baby girl delivered on Tuesday at a hospital with Zika virus.

The mosquito-borne disease can cause unusual small heads and brain damage in newborns, a doctor said.

Doctor Manny Alvarez, chairman of the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Science at Hackensack University Medical Center spoke about the Zika Virus infected new born.

According to the doctor, the 31-year-old mother must have contracted the virus in Honduras, her home country.

The woman arrived New Jersey to visit her relatives in spite of knowing that she had the virus as she had taken blood test in her home country.

Dr. Alvarez said scans on Friday showed the girl was underweight for her gestational age and doctors did not want to risk further exposure to the virus, so they delivered the baby, the woman's second child, by cesarean section on Tuesday.

He also told that the baby had severe microcephaly, an unusually small head, often accompanied by brain damage, which is characteristic of the virus. He added that to his knowledge, it was the first baby in the Northeast to be born with Zika.

Hawaii: back in January a baby was born with Zika virus and reportedly that was the first case of brain damage linked to the virus in the United States, health officials said. A woman in Connecticut who travelled to Central America and became pregnant while she was there has been found to have the virus, officials said.

"It tells you that Zika is real," Dr. Alvarez said. "There is still a lot of work to be done insofar as controlling this virus."