McIlroy still resents Olympics for forcing his hand

World number two Rory McIlroy has said he still resents the Olympic Games for forcing him to choose between Britain and Ireland and revealed that Tiger Woods sends him texts in the early hours.

The Northern Irishman, who agonised for years before opting to represent Ireland, ultimately withdrew from last year's Rio de Janeiro Games after citing health fears over the Zika virus.

The four times major winner told Ireland's Independent newspaper in an interview that it was a choice he had never wanted to make.

"When it (golf's return to the Olympics for the first time since 1904) was announced in 2009 or whatever, all of a sudden it put me in a position where I had to question who I am. Who am I? Where am I from? Where do my loyalties lie?," he said.

"Who am I going to play for? Who do I not want to piss off the most? I started to resent it. And I do. I resent the Olympic Games because of the position it put me in..."

McIlroy sent gold medal winner Justin Rose a text after the Briton's success in Rio offering congratulations and saying he was happy for him.

Rose replied by saying the other players wanted to know whether McIlroy felt he had missed out.

"I said: 'Justin, if I had been on the podium (listening) to the Irish national anthem as that flag went up, or the British national anthem as that flag went up, I would have felt uncomfortable either way.'," recalled McIlroy.

"I don't know the words to either anthem; I don't feel a connection to either flag; I don't want it to be about flags; I've tried to stay away from that."

While Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom, which takes part in the Olympics as Britain, its athletes are eligible to compete for Ireland.

McIlroy described former world number one Woods, who makes his official comeback after a long injury layoff later this month, as "an intriguing character".

"He's thoughtful. He's smart...he reads stuff and educates himself on everything. But he struggles to sleep, which I think is an effect of overtraining," he said.

"He'd be texting me at four o'clock in the morning: 'Up lifting. What are you doing?'"

"Erica (Stoll, McIlroy's fiancee) actually got pissed off with it. He was texting me in the middle of the night and I was like, 'Tiger is in the gym'."

(Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Ken Ferris)

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About 200 Zika cases recorded in Thailand: ministry

BANGKOK - Thailand has recorded about 200 cases of Zika since January, the health ministry said on Tuesday, making it a country with one of the highest numbers of confirmed cases in the region.

It was the first time Thailand's health ministry has confirmed the number of Zika cases this year.

The announcement comes a day after health experts called on Thailand to be more transparent in reporting the Zika threat to the public after health officials played down risks from rising infections of the mosquito-borne virus.

Health officials have expressed concern that disclosing information on Zika, which is linked to serious birth defects, would damage Thailand's lucrative tourism industry.

"Since January, we have recorded about 200 cases and over the past three weeks, we have confirmed an average of 20 new cases per week," Ministry of Public Health spokesman Suwannachai Wattanayingcharoenchai told Reuters.

"The number of cases is stable," he said, without giving further details.

Island city-state Singapore reported its first locally infected Zika patient on Aug. 27 and since then, the number of reported infections has soared to more than 300.

Malaysia and the Philippines have also reported cases.

The virus, which is affecting large parts of Latin America and the Caribbean, has been circulating in Asia for years.

The lineage of the virus circulating in Asia is different to the one in the Americas, researchers say. The level of population immunity to the lineage of Zika in Asia remains unknown, according to the World Health Organization.

Suwannachai urged the public not to panic and reiterated a message aimed at reassuring tourists.

"People shouldn't be scared to visit provinces affected by the Zika virus," Suwannachai said.

Zika infections in pregnant women have been shown to cause microcephaly - a severe birth defect in which the head and brain are undersized - as well as other brain abnormalities.

The connection between Zika and microcephaly first came to light last year in Brazil, which has since confirmed more than 1,800 cases of microcephaly.

Thailand has found no cases of microcephaly linked to Zika and it is monitoring about two dozen pregnant woman and about six who have given birth with no complications, the health ministry said.

In adults, Zika infections have also been linked to a rare neurological syndrome known as Guillain-Barre, as well as other neurological disorders.

The virus was first identified in Uganda in 1947.

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US declares Zika public health emergency in Puerto Rico

CHICAGO - The Obama administration on Friday declared a public health emergency in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, saying the rapid and widespread transmission of the Zika virus threatens the health of infected pregnant women and their babies.

The Caribbean island of about 3.5 million people has recorded 10,690 laboratory-confirmed cases of Zika, including 1,035 pregnant women, but the actual number of infections with the mosquito-borne virus is likely higher, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement.

Among U.S. states and territories, Puerto Rico is expected to see the worst of the Zika outbreak due to its tropical climate and a lack of infrastructure for mosquito control. The only local transmission of the virus so far reported in the continental United States has been in South Florida.

The virus can cause microcephaly, a birth defect marked by abnormally small head size and developmental problems in babies. It also can also be spread by sex, prompting public health officials to advise that people who have been infected refrain from unprotected sex for several months.

"This administration is committed to meeting the Zika outbreak in Puerto Rico with the necessary urgency," HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell said in a statement.

The public health emergency declaration is a tool for the federal government to provide fresh support to Puerto Rico's government to tackle the outbreak and grants access to certain federal funds.

The last time HHS declared such an emergency was in 2012 in the wake of Superstorm Sandy, which slammed into the New Jersey shore and flooded parts of New York City.

It was the second important step to fight Zika that the federal government has taken in as many days. The administration said on Thursday it had shifted $81 million in funds from other projects to continue work on developing vaccines to fight Zika in the absence of any funding from U.S. lawmakers.

REQUEST FROM THE GOVERNOR

HHS made the declaration at the request of Puerto Rico Governor Alejandro García Padilla. It allows Puerto Rico to apply for funding to hire and train unemployed workers to assist in mosquito control efforts, as well as for outreach and education efforts.

It also allows Puerto Rico to temporarily reassign public health workers to assist in the Zika response.

"The declaration will allow access to more funds, the waiving of certain regulatory procedures to speed response, reassign key personnel, allow temporary personnel appointments, and provide the authority to take necessary actions to combat the outbreak," said Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease expert and senior associate at the UPMC Center for Health Security in Baltimore.

Also on Friday, Florida said three more people had become infected with Zika by local mosquitoes, bringing the total to 28.

Zika was first detected last year in Brazil, where it has taken its heaviest toll so far, and has spread rapidly through Latin America and the Caribbean.

"The threat of Zika to future generations of Puerto Ricans is evident, and I feel a responsibility to do everything that is within my reach to make sure we fight the spread of the virus," Garcia Padilla said in a statement.

The Obama administration in February requested $1.9 billion to fight Zika, but the Republican-led Congress has approved no money.

A bill providing $1.1 billion was blocked by Democrats after Republicans attached language to stop abortion-provider Planned Parenthood from using that government funding for healthcare services, mainly in U.S. territories like Puerto Rico.

The Republican legislation also would siphon off unused money under Obama's signature 2010 healthcare law to combat Zika.

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Google teams with UNICEF to map Zika virus spread

SAN FRANCISCO - Google on Thursday said that it is working with UNICEF to map the spread of Zika and pitching in a million dollars to support the group's efforts on the ground.

A volunteer team of Google engineers, designers and data scientists is helping UNICEF build a computer platform to analyze data from sources such as weather and travel patterns to predict potential outbreaks, the director of the Internet giant's charitable arm said in a blog post.

"Ultimately, the goal of this open source platform is to identify the risk of Zika transmission for different regions and help UNICEF, governments and NGO's decide how and where to focus their time and resources," said Google.org director Jacquelline Fuller.

"This set of tools is being prototyped for the Zika response, but will also be applicable to future emergencies."

The million-dollar grant to UNICEF was intended to go toward cutting mosquito populations; developing diagnostics and vaccines; awareness, and prevention, according to Fuller.

Google also launched a campaign to match employee donations, with a goal of providing an additional $500,000 for UNICEF and the Pan American Health Organization efforts to fight Zika.

Google ramped the amount of Zika-related health information, and the number of languages in which they are provided, at its search engine and backed YouTube videos aimed at raising awareness, Fuller said.

The rapidly spreading Zika virus, which has affected more than 20 Latin American countries, is suspected to be the cause of a sudden increase in cases of neonatal microcephaly, a severe deformation of the brain and skull among newborns.

Brazil has been hardest hit.

Countries throughout the region have launched operations to eliminate pools of stagnant water where the mosquitoes, which also spread dengue and chikungunya viruses, can breed.

Cuba has detected the first case of Zika in a Venezuelan doctor who came to the island for postgraduate studies, the health ministry said Wednesday.

The 28-year-old woman, who arrived in Cuba on February 21, is hospitalized at the Pedro Kouri Tropical Medicine Institute in the capital Havana.

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Mosquito repellent sales surge in Brazil amid Zika outbreak

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - Mosquito-borne viruses including Zika, which is feared to cause brain damage in babies, have driven a surge in sales of insect repellent in Brazil, manufacturers say.

The Brazilian insect repellent sector saw sales rise to a record $54 million in 2015 up from $36 million a year earlier, newspaper O Globo said on Sunday, citing a study by the Nielsen consumer research firm.

One manufacturer, Osler, told AFP sales increased 800 percent in the December 2015-January 2016 period, year-on-year.

Pharmacies meanwhile said they were starting to sell out of some repellents.

Brazil is the country worst affected by the outbreak of Zika, with 1.5 million cases reported last year.

Scientists have linked it to babies born with microcephaly, a condition which causes them to have abnormally small heads.

It has also been linked to Guillain-Barre syndrome, a neurological disease that can cause paralysis in humans.

There is currently no cure or vaccine for Zika, which usually causes little more than a fever and rash in adults.

Instead authorities are focusing on preventive measures, cleaning up potential mosquito breeding grounds and recommending that people use repellent.

Brazil has also suffered from a rise in cases of dengue, another mosquito-borne disease.

Dengue killed 863 people in Brazil in 2015, an increase of more than 82 percent on the previous year, the government said.

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Honduras, Nicaragua report first cases of Zika in pregnant women

MANAGUA/TEGUCIGALPA - Nicaragua and Honduras have both detected their first cases of the Zika virus in pregnant women, the Central American countries' governments said on Thursday.

In Nicaragua, government spokeswoman Rosario Murillo, who is also first lady, said three women who were three to four months pregnant had been infected by the mosquito-borne virus and that the country was forging ahead with a fumigation program.

Nicaragua has detected a total of 29 cases of Zika to date.

In Honduras, Health Minister Yolani Batres said on Thursday authorities had detected six cases of Zika in pregnant women, again the first such cases. Honduras has registered more than 3,200 cases of Zika overall.

The World Health Organization has declared a global health emergency over the Zika virus rampaging through the Americas, saying it strongly suspected Zika infection in pregnancy causes microcephaly, a condition marked by abnormally small head size in newborns that can cause permanent brain damage.

El Salvador is grappling with more than 7,000 cases, and last month urged women to avoid getting pregnant until 2018.

(Reporting by Ivan Castro in Managua and Gustavo Palencia in Tegucigalpa; Writing by Simon Gardner)

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Vulnerable Asia fears Zika outbreak

MUMBAI, India - Densely packed slums, rampant mosquitoes and a history of rapidly spreading infections make Asia particularly vulnerable to the devastating Zika virus, posing a massive challenge for the region, health experts warn.

Thailand confirmed Tuesday that a man contracted the mosquito-borne infection, blamed for a surge in the number of brain-damaged babies in South America, while Indonesia has also reported a domestic case.

The cases in Asia come as top US health authorities confirmed this week a patient in Texas contracted the Zika virus through sexual transmission, fuelling fears the disease may spread rapidly.

Officials in India worry it could be next, noting that the Zika and dengue fever-carrying Aedes aegypti mosquito thrives in the high-density communities of its teeming cities, where sanitation is often poor.

"In India particularly there is a great threat of the Zika virus spreading quickly given the presence of the Aedes mosquito and favorable environment," said Om Shrivastav, an infectious diseases specialist.

"It would definitely be a big challenge for Asian countries to control the spread of the virus... considering high population in the region," added Shrivastav, who is based in Mumbai, home to Dharavi, Asia's biggest slum.

More than half of Mumbai's 20 million inhabitants live in slums -- at least one million reside in Dharavi alone -- enduring cramped conditions, poor ventilation and a lack of toilets.

Every summer monsoon, heavy rains lash Mumbai for four months, flooding parts of the city, including the slums' maze of alleyways, which become fertile breeding grounds for mosquitos and lead to a massive spike in tropical diseases.

Soumya Swaminathan, director general of the Indian Council for Medical Research, warned against panicking but said a surge of dengue cases worldwide recently, was a cause for concern.

"(Because of) the way dengue has spread over the last several years across continents and across countries, (and with) Zika being a mosquito borne illness, there is a potential for spread," she told Indian news channel NDTV.

Zika, which was first identified in Uganda in 1947, causes relatively mild flu-like symptoms and a rash.

But the World Health Organization (WHO) said it "strongly suspected" the Zika virus of being responsible for a rapid rise in cases of microcephaly, a condition in which a baby is born with an abnormally small head and brain.

Latin American countries, particularly Brazil, have reported a leap in cases of microcephaly since the Zika outbreak was declared in the region last year.

The UN-body has declared the situation a "public health emergency of international concern" and has created a global Zika response unit to contain the virus.

WHO expert Anthony Costello has stressed there is no reason to believe the crisis would remain limited to Latin America, where 25 countries so far have reported Zika cases.

'PREVENTATIVE MEASURES'

"We know that the mosquitoes that carry Zika virus... are present through most of Africa, parts of southern Europe and many parts of Asia, particularly south Asia," he said.

Eloi Yao, a WHO spokesman in Manila, said there was a "likelihood" that Zika would spread to Asia but described the present risk as "low".

"Right now, we don't want to raise the level of anxiety," he told AFP, noting that Zika had been found in Asian countries before.

The Zika infection was reported in Cambodia in 2010 and the Philippines in 2012, according to WHO.

Asian governments are no strangers to dealing with deadly outbreaks of viruses and could be forgiven if they felt jittery over Zika.

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) killed hundreds of people, mostly in China and Hong Kong, when it spread fear across Asia in 2003.

Hong Kong-based virologist Malik Peiris said "there is a danger" that Zika could be confused with dengue fever and other mosquito-borne illnesses, adding governments should carefully track new cases.

"Zika might come in unrecognised, until it's spreading in an alarming rate," Peiris, from Hong Kong University, told AFP.

Last year South Korea declared the official end to a deadly outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) that killed 36 people.

When Thailand confirmed its case this week, an official said the Southeast Asian giant had recorded an average of "not more than five cases yearly" since the disease was first confirmed there in 2012.

But he played down fears of a future outbreak in the region, describing all the cases as "one-offs" and insisting there was "no need to panic".

Most Asian governments appear to be taking a similar stance. Pakistan for example described the risk of a Zika outbreak there as "non-significant", but added it was carefully monitoring the situation.

Yao said the WHO was working with countries, including making sure "their environment is clean" while Shrivastav warned against any complacency.

"We need to be very cautious and have to take preventive measures to keep the virus at bay," said the Mumbai-based expert.

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Race for Zika vaccine gathers momentum as virus spreads

Vaccine is seen as months, if not years, away
U.S. CDC activates Zika emergency response center
Geneva-based WHO plans emergency meeting Monday

Companies and scientists are racing to create a Zika vaccine as concern grows over the mosquito-borne virus that has been linked to severe birth defects and is spreading quickly through the Americas.

Zika is now present in 23 countries and territories in the Americas. Brazil, the hardest-hit country, has reported around 3,700 cases of the devastating birth defect called microcephaly that are strongly suspected to be related to Zika.

The Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO), stung by criticism that it reacted too slowly to West Africa's Ebola epidemic, convenes an emergency meeting on Monday to help determine its response to the spread of the virus.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has activated an emergency operations center staffed around the clock to address Zika, agency officials told Reuters.

On Thursday, the WHO said as many as 4 million people in the Americas may become infected by Zika, adding urgency to the research efforts. Vaccine developers made clear a vaccine for widespread public use is at least months, if not years, away.

The closest prospect may be from a consortium including drugmaker Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc that could have a vaccine ready for emergency use before year-end, according to one of its lead developers. Inovio's share price gained more than 15 percent in Friday trading.

Canadian scientist Gary Kobinger told Reuters on Thursday the first stage of testing on humans could begin as early as August. If successful, the vaccine might be used during a public health emergency by October or November, said Kobinger, who helped develop a trial vaccine for the Ebola virus.

Privately owned vaccine developer Hawaii Biotech Inc said it began a formal program to test a Zika vaccine last fall as the virus started to gain traction in Brazil, although it has no timetable yet for clinical trials.

"Right now, we are in the pre-clinical stage, as I suspect everyone is," Chief Executive Officer Dr. Elliot Parks told Reuters.

Another private vaccine developer, Boston-based Replikins Ltd, said it was preparing to start animal studies on a Zika vaccine in the next 10 days. Data from the trials on mice and rabbits would likely be out in the next couple of months, Replikins Chairman Samuel Bogoch told Reuters.

"No one has the $500 million on hand to take it (a vaccine) all the way to human trials. Somewhere along the course we hope to have big pockets join us," Bogoch said.

'FIGHT THE MOSQUITO'

Zika had been viewed as a relatively mild illness until Brazilian health officials identified it as a matter of concern for pregnant women. While a direct causal relationship has not been established, scientists strongly suspect a link between Zika and thousands of children born in Brazil with abnormally small heads, brain defects and impaired vision.

There is no treatment for Zika infection.

Efforts to combat Zika are focused on protecting people from being bitten and on eradicating mosquitoes, a tough task in many parts of Latin America, where people live in poverty and there are plentiful breeding grounds for the insect.

"We do not have a vaccine for Zika yet. The only thing we can do is fight the mosquito," Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said on Friday, reiterating her call for a national eradication effort.

Rousseff said tests for the development of a vaccine would begin next week at the Butantan Institute, one of Brazil's leading biomedical research centers in Sao Paulo.

U.S. President Barack Obama spoke on Friday with Rousseff about the spread of the virus, the White House said.

"The leaders agreed on the importance of collaborative efforts to deepen our knowledge, advance research and accelerate work to develop better vaccines and other technologies to control the virus," the White House said in a statement.

Zika has hit Brazil just as it prepares to host the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro on Aug. 5-21, an event that draws hundreds of thousands of athletes, team officials and spectators. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) assured teams on Friday the Olympics would be safe from Zika, but urged visitors to carefully protect themselves.

U.S. lawmakers have begun to press the Obama administration for details of its response to Zika. At least 31 people in the country have been infected, all of them after travel to affected countries.

The U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee is planning a hearing on Zika "very soon," said Republican Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who called the threat posed by the virus to the United States a "big concern."

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, said he did not expect the United States to be hit hard like other some countries in South America and the Caribbean.

"We prepare for the possibility of a major outbreak but we believe it is unlikely to happen," Fauci said.

(Reporting by Rod Nickel in Winnipeg, Manitoba; and Natalie Grover in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Amrutha Penumudi in Bengaluru; Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago, Toni Clarke in Washington, Karolos Grohmann in Berlin, Anthony Boadle in Brasilia, Jeffrey Dastin in New York; Writing by Frances Kerry; Editing by Will Dunham and Lisa Shumaker)

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Obama calls for rapid Zika research as virus seen spreading

CHICAGO/WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama on Tuesday called for the rapid development of tests, vaccines and treatments to fight the mosquito-transmitted Zika virus, which has been linked to birth defects and could spread to the United States in warmer months.

U.S. health officials are stepping up efforts to study the link between Zika virus infections and birth defects, citing a recent study estimating the virus could reach regions where 60 percent of the U.S. population lives.

Obama was briefed on the potential spread of the virus by his top health and national security officials on Tuesday.

"The president emphasized the need to accelerate research efforts to make available better diagnostic tests, to develop vaccines and therapeutics, and to ensure that all Americans have information about the Zika virus and steps they can take to better protect themselves from infection," the White House said in a statement.

The virus has been linked to brain damage in thousands of babies in Brazil. There is no vaccine or treatment for Zika, a close cousin of dengue and chikungunya, which causes mild fever and rash. An estimated 80 percent of people infected have no symptoms, making it difficult for pregnant women to know whether they have been infected.

On Monday, the World Health Organization predicted the virus would spread to all countries across the Americas except for Canada and Chile.

In a blog post, National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins cited a Lancet study published Jan. 14 in which researchers predicted the Zika virus could be spread in areas along the East and West Coasts of the United States and much of the Midwest during warmer months, where about 200 million people live.

The study also showed that 22.7 million more people live in humid parts of the country where mosquitoes carrying the virus could live year round.

Given the threat, Collins said "it is now critically important to confirm, through careful epidemiological and animal studies, whether or not a causal link exists between Zika virus infections in pregnant women and microcephaly in their newborn babies." Microcephaly results in babies being born with abnormally small heads.

There is still much to learn about Zika infections, experts said. For example, it is not clear how common Zika infections are in pregnant women, or when during a pregnancy a woman is most at risk of transmitting the virus to her fetus.

Collins said the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease is conducting studies to more fully understand the effects of Zika in humans, and to develop better diagnostic tests to quickly determine if someone has been infected. The NIAID is also working on testing new drugs that might be effective against the virus.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also announced new instructions for pediatricians treating infants whose mothers may have been exposed to the virus during pregnancy.

In those guidelines, the CDC made clear that it considers the Zika virus a nationally notifiable condition, and instructs doctors to contact their state or territorial health departments to facilitate testing of potentially infected infants.

Dr. Kathryn Edwards of Vanderbilt University, who serves on the American Academy of Pediatrics' committee on infectious disease, said the guidelines were intended to help establish whether Zika causes microcephaly and to help pregnant women who may have been infected with the virus.

Microcephaly is a lifelong condition with no known cure, the CDC website said. Symptoms range from mild to severe.

In mild cases, infants often have no symptoms other than small head size, but doctors still need to check their development regularly. In severe cases, babies may need speech, occupational and physical therapy.

The guidelines for testing infants affected by Zika infections follows CDC guidelines for caring for pregnant women exposed to Zika virus, which were first reported by Reuters. The CDC said last week it is trying to determine how many pregnant women may have traveled to affected regions in the past several months.

On Tuesday, the CDC added the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Dominican Republic to its list of countries and territories with Zika transmissions, bringing the total to 24.

The CDC has told pregnant women not to travel to countries and territories in Latin America and the Caribbean affected by Zika. Travel companies, including United Airlines, have begun offering refunds or allowing pregnant women to postpone trips to regions affected by Zika with no penalty.

There are no global estimates for how many people in the world have been infected by the Zika virus, World Health Organization spokesman Christian Lindmeier said on Tuesday.

He said that because Zika has such mild symptoms, the virus has "not really been on the radar."

Lindmeier said it was not yet clear whether the virus affecting Brazil and other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean was a mutated version of the virus that has caused prior outbreaks.

He said the WHO was working with the CDC, the Institut Pasteur in France and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine to establish that.

"There is a lot of effort going into this now, on the ground, in the laboratories, everywhere," Lindmeier said.

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