New York Times Writer Pens A Book About Zika To Launch A Month Before Rio Olympics

The outbreak of Zika Virus has been spreading like wildfire in Southern America terrorizing mothers-to-be of its effects on the unborn child. Now, global health reporter for the New York Times, Donald G. McNeil Jr. has written a new book that will address everything about the epidemic.

McNiel is science and health reporter for the New York Times that specializes on plagues and pestilence. He covers most diseases of poor countries such as AIDS, malaria, avian flu, SARS, mad cow disease and so on. Now that Zika is quickly spreading the area it affects, Mcniel has decided to write a book to better understand the effects of the virus, what to do when a person gets bitten in a Zika- prone area, and so on.

The book entitled ZIKA: The Emerging Epidemic is set to be published on July 6, 2016 just a month before the August Rio de Janeiro Summer Olympics. In the book, McNiel, who has been spending most of his career covering plagues and outbreaks for the New York Times and whose front-page reports continues to be of great help in focusing the nation's attention on the terrifying outbreak, describes the behind-the-scene situation and the back story of where how Zika originated. The book also tells about the virus' dramatic spread in 2016, and how the public was eventually infected by it.

If you're the one who wants to separate facts from rumors surrounding the outbreak, then this book is a good read for you since it contains more than 10 pages of Q&A at the back of the book which addressed some of the most questions at the back of every reader's mind such as:

• Should I attend the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro if I'm pregnant? Should my husband/boyfriend attend the Games?
• How dangerous is Zika?What are the symptoms?
• What should I do if I've been bitten in a Zika transmission area?
• Is it true that Zika can also be sexually transmitted?

The book was written while McNiel continued to report about the epidemic. At present, the Aedes aegypti mosquitos that carry Zika Virus are currently found in 30 states, and not only along the Gulf Coast as what was originally thought. This summer will be the first summer after the first outbreak of the virus in the United States, and unfortunately no one has immunity.