Despite the fact that CDC director Tom Frieden said last month that Zika will eventually become "endemic" to this hemisphere, there is a thin silver lining: The World Health Organization (WHO) announced today it no longer considers Zika a "public health emergency of international concern." “We certainly collaborate with them,” he said, “but we’re not involved operationally.”

WHO officials first declared Zika a Public Health Emergency of International Concern in February after an outbreak of the virus in Brazil led to a cluster of birth defects and other neurological disorders in babies born to mothers infected while pregnant. “It remains crucially important that pregnant women avoid travelling to areas with local transmission of Zika, because of the devastating complications that can occur in fetuses that become infected during pregnancy,” the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in a statement. "If anything, this has been escalated in importance by becoming activities that will be continued in the long term in the World Health Organization," he said. “Regardless of how WHO defines Zika, [the disease] is unprecedented, and it’s an extraordinary risk for pregnant women,” Frieden says, adding, “That’s why it’s important that pregnant women not travel to places where Zika is spreading.”

These locations include countries in South America, the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, and areas in Florida. There have been some 2,300 confirmed cases worldwide of babies born with microcephaly, most in Brazil, but the figure is most likely a “significant under-estimate”, he said.
The World Health Organization declares an end to its global health crisis over the spread of the Zika virus as it has been shown to be a dangerous mosquito-borne disease like malaria or yellow fever.