The announcement came the same day the Food and Drug Administration revised its guidance to recommend that all blood donations in the United States and its territories be tested for the Zika virus.
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NEW YORK (AP) – U.S. health officials on Friday reported the first case of Zika spread through sex by a man with no symptoms of the disease. Previously, the FDA only advised screening in areas with active Zika cases, such as parts of Florida and throughout Puerto Rico. It’s now advising all blood banks in the country to test donations for the virus. The order followed now-confirmed reports of local Zika transmission, which were the first in the continental U.S.
If you think you have been exposed to Zika, however, don’t donate blood – contact your county health department.
To get around this problem, the FDA’s new guidance calls for testing all donated blood using a so-called nucleic acid test. The cost of adding Zika testing to the screening process is less than $10 per blood donation, according to officials at South Texas Blood and Tissue Center.
“This’ll be a challenge, but it’ll be a challenge that I think we and the blood bank community in general can rise to and meet it”, said Dr. Chester Andrzejewski.
“Testing labs and the test vendors are working feverishly to allow testing to start on time in the areas subject to the 12-week timeline”, he said in an email.
Zika also attacks neural stem cells directly, the researchers found.
Dr. Andrzejewski, Director of Transfusion Medical Services at Baystate Medical Center, said the hospital is responding quickly to the FDA’s new warning.
Because the Zika virus has forced the deferral of hundreds of thousands of donors across the nation, Prijatel said, blood centers have asked people who have never given blood before to consider making a donation.
Since its discovery, scientists have found that the Zika virus can also be transmitted through sex.
She said people who need a blood transfusion need to balance the risk of not getting transfused against their perceived risk of contracting Zika. Serologic tests for Zika, as well as for chikungunya and dengue, were negative.
In Puerto Rico, where Zika arrived in December 2015, health officials have been systematically tracking cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome following reports in other countries showing an increase in cases related to Zika.
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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”.
