– The question of how long you should wait before you try to get pregnant if you fear you might be infected with the Zika virus is a really complicated matter. Because some people might have Zika but show no symptoms, it’s hard to know for certain if you are sick and when are you 100% better, which is an important condition before trying to get pregnant. As Time reports, according to Dr. Denise Jamieson, chief of the Women’s Health and Fertility Branch, “if a person is infected in an endemic country, then we are recommending that women wait 8 weeks and men wait 6 months [before trying to conceive].” There’s no magic behind the 8 week and 6-month period, but these timeframes are based on how long experts believe the virus can live in your blood and how long it can persist in the testes after it has been cleared from the blood.
