I was sitting in a taxi heading back to my hotel in Copacabana after a day touring the streets of Rio de Janeiro, when an ad came on the radio and I heard the words “Zika” and “mosquito” a few times. The cab driver chuckled lightly to himself and looked back at me in the rear-view mirror. We made eye contact, he saw I caught those few words, and he laughed again.
It was the fourth day of my trip, and this was the first mention of Zika.
The Zika virus started gaining international attention last month, after spreading from Brazil to other countries in Central and South America and the Caribbean. The World Health Organization declared the Zika outbreak a “public health emergency of international concern.” It’s only the fourth time the WHO has declared a public health emergency, after the Ebola outbreak and polio resurgence in 2014, and H1N1 swine flu in 2009. Read more…
More about Travel, Brazil, Health, Destinations, and Us World
