OTTAWA - More than 200 Canadians have been infected by a virus that has sickened almost 800,000 people in the Caribbean.

A Health Canada official says as of Oct. 1, some 201 Canadians had been infected with chikungunya disease, a virus transmitted by mosquitoes that causes fever and severe joint pain, as well as muscle pain, headache, nausea, fatigue and rash.

Eric Morrissette says there is no evidence of local transmission in Canada, since there are no mosquitoes in the country that transmit the virus.

He says the majority of the Canadian cases with travel history involved travel to islands in the Caribbean, where the virus is believed to have emerged in late 2013.

The first case of the disease in the Western Hemisphere was documented on the island of St. Martin last December.

Jamaica recently declared a state of emergency as it grapples with chikungunya. Some estimate as much as 60 per cent of the Jamaican population has been infected.