(160227) — SAN JOSE, Feb. 27, 2016 (Xinhua) — An employee of Costa Rica’s Ministry of Health takes part in a day of fumigation to combat the Aedes aegypti mosquito, carrier of Zika virus, in a clinic of San Jose, capital of Costa Rica, on Feb. 26, 2016. According to local press, the Ministry of Health of Costa Rica reported on Monday the first autochthonous confirmed case of Zika virus in the country, which was found in a 24-years-old woman, who has 36 weeks of gestation and is resident of the town of Samara of Nicoya, Guanacaste province on the northern Pacific coast of Costa Rica, so that the authorities announced the declaration of a health alert for the canton of Nicoya, Guanacaste. The baby of the woman is in good health and she did an ultrasound to discard the microcephaly. The second patient, is another neighbor woman in the same location of the first, she is 32-year-old, who is mother of a girl of eighteen months. On Thursday night the Costa Rican Government decreed a preventive estate of emergency in 31 of 81 cantons of the country, after the appearance of the first cases of Zika, which seeks to strengthen efforts to control the Aedes aegypti mosquito, carrier of the Zika virus, dengue and chikungunya. The decree was signed by Costa Rica’s Health Minister Fernando Llorca Castro. (Xinhua/Kent Gilbert) (jp) (sp)