India: The state of Kerala in India has been on high alert after being infected with Zika | Health Issues

The pregnant woman was diagnosed with a mosquito-borne disease, while 13 other suspected cases are being investigated.

Officials in the southern state of Kerala in India have issued a nationwide notification after the Zika virus cases were confirmed, officials said.

The 13 suspects were being investigated, Health Minister Veena George said on Friday.

A 24-year-old woman was diagnosed with a mosquito-borne disease and was being treated at a hospital in Thiruvananthapuram.

Examples of 13 suspected cases have been sent for investigation to a laboratory in Pune, a Kerala minister said.

Pregnant women are at high risk and may be able to pass on to their newborn a life-changing condition such as Guillain-Barre syndrome.

It can also cause defects such as microcephaly, which causes babies to be born with a small head due to difficulties in brain development.

Zika is highly contagious through the bite of Aedes mosquitoes but can also be transmitted sexually, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The virus was first identified in the monkey Zika Forest in Uganda in 1947 and has caused various diseases worldwide in the last few decades.

There is no vaccine or anti-viral drug available as prevention or cure. The World Health Organization has declared it the Public Health Emergency of International Concern in 2016.

Symptoms include fever, skin rash, conjunctivitis and muscle and bone pain, but mortality is rare.

Authorities say an infected woman in Kerala showed signs of fever, headaches and tumors before she was admitted to hospital, where she gave birth on Wednesday.

Health teams have been sent to the area to investigate any other cases.

India also caused Zika outbreaks in 2017 and 2018, when hundreds of cases were reported in western Gujarat and Rajasthan, as well as in central Madhya Pradesh, but recent outbreaks are the first of its kind in Kerala.

The government is currently battling an increase in the number of cases of COVID-19, with more than 13,000 cases reported on Friday, more than a three of the 43,393 Indian cases registered on the same day.