Brazil's health ministry sounded the alarm in July after four babies were born with microcephaly, a condition in which the baby's head is smaller than expected, because their mothers had been infected with the virus.
The mosquito-borne Zika virus is also known to cause birth defects such as microcephaly: Brazil experienced a major outbreak in 2015 and 2016, infecting an estimated 1.5 million people and recording more than 3,500 cases of microcephaly in infants, Science magazine reported.
There is no vaccine or medicine to prevent or treat OROV. The disease is rarely fatal, but Brazil recently reported the world's first two deaths from the virus, both of whom were women in their 20s.
More than 8,000 cases have been reported in South America, Central America and the Caribbean since January, with outbreaks also reported in Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Peru and Cuba.
The ECDC said the risk of infection for European citizens travelling to affected areas in the Americas is “assessed to be moderate. However, the risk of human infection in Europe remains very low, as the continent does not contain the midges or mosquitoes that carry the virus and no cases of human-to-human transmission have been recorded to date.
Europe has also reported an increase in mosquito-borne diseases such as West Nile virus, with recent cases confirmed in Greece and Romania.
