37K Colombians infected with Zika, including 6,300 pregnant women

More than 37,000 people have been infected with the mosquito-borne Zika virus in Colombia, including over 6,300 pregnant women, health authorities say. 

The country's National Institute of Health (NIH) released the latest figures on Saturday, saying that it was based on data reported on February 13 that shows a surge of 5,456 cases of the infection within the last week for which data is available.

The Colombian health ministry has further confirmed three deaths attributed to a neurological disorder known as Guillain-Barre syndrome, which is suspected to be associated with the virus.

The quick spread of the infection has prompted alarms across America due to its highly suspected association with a serious birth defect, referred to as microcephaly, in infants born to women infected with the virus while pregnant.

Microcephaly is an irreversible condition in which an infant is born with an abnormally small head and brain.

Colombia has reported the second largest number of Zika infections in Latin America next only to Brazil, which has registered 1.5 million cases so far after the epidemic was first detected in 2015.

According to the NIH, 6,356 of the 37,011 cases involve pregnant women, 522 of which have been confirmed in laboratory tests.

While clinical exams were used to identify 30,148 Zika cases in Colombia, laboratory tests confirmed only 1,612 infections in the reported cases, with 5,251 more listed as suspected cases of the virus.

Meanwhile, health officials expect that over 600,000 more people will be infected with the virus in Colombia this year.

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