Lima, Peru Zika virus
© AFP 2016/ ERNESTO BENAVIDES
The United States has added the Dominican Republic and the US Virgin Islands to the list of countries for pregnant women to avoid amid the spread of the Zika virus through Latin American and the Caribbean, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced in a statement.

"CDC is working with other public health officials to monitor for ongoing Zika virus‎ transmission," the statement said on Tuesday. "Today, CDC added the following destinations to the Zika virus travel alerts: United States Virgin Islands and Dominican Republic."

The travel warning spans 24 countries throughout Latin America, the Caribbean and the Pacific, as the health experts predict the virus, for which no vaccine has yet been developed, will likely spread through the Americas.

Meanwhile, the mosquito-borne virus, which can spread from pregnant women to unborn babies, is known to cause serious birth defects in the brain as well as other poor pregnancy outcomes in babies of infected mothers.

The recent outbreak of the infection started in Brazil, which lead to several deaths and hundreds of cases of micro-encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain that affected the growth and development of the fetus.