The Food and Drug Administration released new recommendations Friday asking all Us blood banks to start screening for the Zika virus.
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The blood center will continue screening potential donors who have traveled to Zika endemic areas, including Florida’s Miami-Dade County and Palm Beach County, as well as the Caribbean, Mexico and Central or South America.
According to an FDA statement, “Expanded testing will continue to reduce the risk for transmission of Zika virus through the US blood supply and will be in effect until the risk of transfusion transmission of Zika virus is reduced”.
Expanded testing will continue to reduce the risk for transmission of Zika virus through the United States blood supply and will be in effect until the risk of transfusion transmission of Zika virus is reduced, the FDA said.
On Friday, the FDA recommended that all blood banks in the United States screen donations for the Zika virus. Other recommendations are to use pathogen-reduction devices, or halt blood collection and obtain whole blood and blood components from areas of the USA without active virus transmission – but that was back in February.
“There is now no risk for contracting Zika virus in Santa Barbara County via infected mosquitoes”, County Health Officer Charity Dean said. Shortly after, American Samoa and the US Virgin Islands reported similar locally transmitted infections.
The FDA estimates about one million units of blood are donated a month nationwide.
Scientists are working to find out how long Zika stays in the semen and vaginal fluids of infected people, and how long it can be passed to sex partners. Meanwhile, three out of every four people infected with Zika don’t display symptoms. But only Florida has reported active transmission by infected mosquitoes.
During a Zika outbreak in French Polynesia in 2013 and 2014, almost 3 percent of blood samples from people with no sign of infection were found to contain the virus, which could have been spread to others through routine infusions.
The man in the latest case, detailed in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, had recently traveled to the Dominican Republic, one of the places in which the virus is prevalent.
In addition, Red Cross is conducting blood donor tests for Zika virus in five southeastern states believed to be at greater risk of local mosquito transmission.
The kit includes insect repellant, information about the Zika virus, condoms and “mosquito dunks”, which kill unborn mosquitoes when dissolved in standing water. Further, HHS said, as of August 18, there were more than 1,300 pregnant women with evidence of Zika virus, including 529 pregnant women in US states and Washington, D.C., and 691 pregnant women in USA territories.
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“Suggesting that Zika virus in an infant causes damage in brain cells”, Dean said.
