Skip directly to site content Skip directly to search
An official website of the United States government
Here's how you know
Official websites use .gov

A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS

A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

NOTE: A surveillance case definition is a set of uniform criteria used to define a disease for public health surveillance. Surveillance case definitions enable public health officials to classify and count cases consistently across reporting jurisdictions. Surveillance case definitions are not intended to be used by healthcare providers for making a clinical diagnosis or determining how to meet an individual patient’s health needs.

Subtype(s)

  • Zika virus disease, non-congenital infection and Zika virus, congenital infection
  • Zika virus, congenital infection

Clinical Criteria

A person with one or more of the following:

  • acute onset of fever (measured or reported)
  • maculopapular rash
  • arthralgia
  • conjunctivitis
  • complication of pregnancy
    • fetal loss in a mother with compatible illness and/or epidemiologic risk factors; OR
    • in utero findings of microcephaly and/or intracranial calcifications with maternal risk factors
  • Guillain-Barré syndrome not known to be associated with another diagnosed etiology.

Epidemiologic Linkage

  • Travel to a country or region with known ZIKV transmission, OR
  • Sexual contact with a laboratory confirmed case of ZIKV infection, OR
  • Receipt of blood or blood products within 30 days of symptom onset; OR
  • Organ transplant recipient within 30 days of symptom onset; OR
  • Association in time and place with a confirmed or probable case.

Subtype(s) Case Definition

Case Classification

Probable

Meets clinical criteria AND

  • resides in or has recently traveled to an area with ongoing ZIKV transmission, OR
  • has direct epidemiologic linkage to a person with laboratory evidence of recent ZIKV infection (e.g. sexual contact, in utero or perinatal transmission, blood transfusion, organ transplantation), OR
  • association in time and place with a confirmed or probable case.

AND meets the following laboratory criteria:

  • positive ZIKV-specific immunoglobulin M (IgM) antibodies in serum or cerebrospinal fluid (CSF); AND
  • negative dengue virus-specific IgM antibodies; AND
    • No neutralizing antibody testing performed; OR
    • Less than four-fold difference in neutralizing antibody titers between ZIKV and dengue or other flaviviruses endemic to the region where exposure occurred.

Confirmed

Meets clinical criteria AND
Has laboratory evidence of recent ZIKV infection by:

  • Detection of ZIKV by culture, viral antigen or viral ribonucleic acid (RNA) in serum, CSF, tissue, or other specimen (e.g. amniotic fluid, urine, semen, saliva); OR
  • ZIKV IgM antibodies in serum or CSF with ZIKV neutralizing antibody titers 4-fold or greater than neutralizing antibody titers against dengue or other flaviviruses endemic to the region where exposure occurred.

Related Case Definition(s)