The risk of blood transmission is considered likely based on the most current scientific evidence of how Zika and similar viruses are spread, FDA officials have said.
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The acting Secretary for Food and Health, Professor Sophia Chan Siu-chee, was speaking after the city went into heightened alert on the virus, which can cause serious birth defects, when a 38-year-old expatriate woman was confirmed to be infected after returning from the Caribbean island of Saint-Barthelemy.
In March, the FDA granted Roche approval for a clinical trial testing its Zika blood screening test in Puerto Rico, where local blood donations had been halted and blood had to be imported from the continental United States. It is also tied to a rare autoimmune disorder called Guillain-Barre syndrome.
Back in February, the FDA also asked that people who had traveled to places where the Zika virus is prevalent, or who have symptoms that suggest infection, should wait a month before donating blood.
Though agreeing that this development could be worrisome to pregnant women, Brooks said it’s “reassuring to us at the CDC that all other cases of sexual transmission, with the exception of a possible case in France, have been between people who eventually developed symptoms”.
Engaged in sexual contact with a person who has traveled to, or resided in, an area with active Zika virus transmission during the prior three months.
This new twist in the myriad ways Zika can spread should strengthen warnings to couples hoping to start a family if either one plans to travel anywhere the virus is active, health officials said.
“That’s the largest cohort in all of Latin America”, Rojas said.
Since Puerto Rico’s first Zika diagnosis last December, cases of Guillain-Barre there have dramatically increased, the CDC reported.
Once the first cases of locally transmitted Zika fever were identified in Miami, however, Longini and his colleagues felt more comfortable publishing 2016 estimates projecting the number of locally transmitted cases that they expect will occur in Florida.
About 4 out of 5 Zika-infected patients do not show symptoms, according to Ron Corley, director of the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories in Boston.
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Both reports were published August 26 in the CDC publication Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
