The app, announced by the country's Health Ministry, will help users determine whether they have symptoms of the mosquito-carried virus.

It will also be able to direct visitors to the nearest hospital or pharmacy, if required, and will be available in seven different languages -  English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Arabic, Mandarin Chinese and Russian.

Rio organisers hope the app - due to be released in May - will help ease fears caused by Zika ahead of the Olympic Opening Ceremony on August 5.

Other tactics Brazil has used so far includes blasting carrier Aedes mosquitoes with gamma rays.

Up to 12 million males will be zapped to sterilise them, meaning they will produce no offspring when they breed.

The virus, which was declared as a global emergency by the World Health Organization, spread rapidly throughout the Americas and then began to reach other parts of the world.

Its epicentre is Brazil, where there have been hundreds of thousands of suspected cases.

Effects of Zika include fevers, rashes, joint pain, eye redness and conjunctivitis, although it is thought only 20 per cent of people infected will display any symptoms. 

A supposed link with microcephaly, which causes babies to be born with small heads and under-developed brains, has put pregnant women on particular high alert.

A possible link between Zika and Guillain–Barré syndrome, a neurological disorder which causes muscle weakness, is also being investigated.

There is no treatment or vaccine currently available - although efforts are underway to remedy this - with the best form of prevention thought to be protection against mosquito bites.

It is also thought that the cooler Brazilian climate during the Olympics and Paralympics in August and September will mean the mosquitoes are less prevalent.

Uğur Erdener, the Turkish President of World Archery who is a qualified doctor and chair of the International Olympic Committee's Medical and Scientific Commission, has said he is confident "significant" steps are being taken in Rio de Janeiro.

A study by The Global Language Monitor (GLM), however, found that Zika was having a "significant impact" on certain Olympic sponsors ahead of the Games.

GLM analyses and catalogues the latest trends in word usage and word choices, and their impact on the various aspects of culture, with a particular focus on English.