Days after declaring a state of emergency due to the rampant spread of the Zika virus, Brazil has announced that it is developing new testing kits designed to quickly identify the presence of three viruses: Dengue, Zika and Chikungunya.

As the BBC reports, the nations’s Health Minister, Marcelo Castro, said that getting the test to pregnant women would be the first priority. According to Castro, extra funds have also been allocated to speed up finding a vaccine for Zika.

The outbreak of Zika in Brazil has lead to a profound increase in birth defects. As previously reported, from 2014-2015, the number of babies born with microcephaly has increased from 200 to nearly 3,000. The Brazilian government revealed that around 1.5 million of its citizens have been infected since May 2015.

The Zika virus has been reported in Latin American regions such as Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia and Puerto Rico.

As previously reported, earlier this month the first case of Zika in the U.S. was confirmed in Harris County, Texas. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the infected Harris County resident contracted the virus after returning from Latin America.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Dr. Umair Shah, the executive director of the Harris County Public Health & Environmental Services department in Texas, said that although there was currently no evidence that the Zika virus was in the area’s pool of mosquitoes, this situation was likely to change.

“It’s probably more a case of when Zika virus will be in the U.S. in our mosquito population than if,” he said.

The U.S. State Department has also confirmed the first case of a baby born with brain damage due to the Zika virus. As CNN reports, the baby, who was born in Oahu, Hawaii, was infected in utero. Hawaii's Health Department said, "The mother likely had Zika infection when she was residing in Brazil in May 2015 and her newborn acquired the infection in the womb."

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