During the winter some students caught a cold, others caught the norovirus, but a common disease in the world right now is the Zika virus.

The Zika virus is a disease spread by mosquitos. It spread very fast in South America. But also here in the U.S. are the first infected people, because they brought it back from South America. It might also affect the Olympics in Brazil this summer.

So far, there is no vaccine or drug treatment against Zika. Patients are advised to stay in bed and drink plenty of fluids. Only one-in-five infected people develop symptoms like mild fever, conjunctivitis, headache or joint pain.

Most people survive the virus and deaths are rare. The worst known effect that the Zika virus has is microcephaly. A condition where a baby is born with an abnormally small head, because the brain has not developed properly.

“Those children are disabled their whole life, but you can’t say in general what disability they have or how bad it is,” gynecologist Susanne Smith said.

So far, it is not clear if there are any long-term consequences. “There is currently no evidence that Zika virus infection poses a risk of birth defects in future pregnancies” the US Centers for Disease Control said according to the BBC.

Brazil, where the Zika virus spread quickly, had fewer than 150 cases of microcephaly in 2014, but more than 4,700 cases have been reported since Oct 22, 2015. The situation in Brazil is complicated and the Olympic Games are in Brazil this summer.

“I can imagine that the Zika virus also affects the Olympics. I heard several times in the news that athletes do not want to come. I can also imagine that during this sport event the virus will spread out much more on the whole world,” Brazilian foreign exchange student Beatriz Marques said.

The Brazilian government and organizations are trying to deal with the situation.

“Many private organizations try to handle Zika and hand out lots of fliers to inform the people about that virus. They also tell you to take many showers, because mosquitos like sweat,” Marques said.

The problem is that Zika is a rather new disease, because there is not much information about it.

“Well, I think everybody should be careful. Of course, it would be much easier when we would know everything about this disease, so we would know, how it affects our life and how to deal with it,” Smith said.

Some people think there is too much drama about this disease, because there are always some dangerous diseases like pig flu or Ebola.

“I think it is not so much drama, it is more fear. Suddenly everybody is dying and nobody understand it. It is a vicious circle. It is a fear we should take care of, but of course there will always be something,” nurse Angie York said.

It will change when more people are affected.

“Right now the virus basically affects unborn and pregnant women,” York said.

There are some others diseases that are a bigger problem and affect more people.

“I think there are many diseases we should care more about it, for example AIDS, but of course we should care about all of them,“ Smith said.