State health officials suggest clearing stagnant water once a week.
Advertisement
Blood banks already test donations for HIV, hepatitis, West Nile and other blood-borne viruses.
Vector control remains the main approach in reducing the spread of Zika, and will be extended to other parts of Singapore.
The Zika virus was first detected in Brazil a year ago and has since spread across the Americas.
According to the health minister, Zika cases in Indonesia have been detected among an indigenous tribe that lives deep in the forests of Sumatra island as well as among foreign tourists leaving the country. But Marks said that only 1 percent of donations in Puerto Rico have tested positive for Zika virus.
“The donation was identified while the blood bag was still in quarantine, before it was released”, Marks told reporters on a conference call.
Roche’s Zika test now can be used to screen patients that meet CDC criteria, including fever, rash, joint pain and red eyes. The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared Zika’s spread an worldwide health emergency, and WHO and a number of governments have urged pregnant women and their partners not to travel to the countries where Zika is now active. The revised guidance announced today recommends that all states and USA territories screen individual units of donated Whole Blood and blood components with a blood screening test authorized for use by the FDA under an investigational new drug (IND) application, or licensed test when available.
The advisory was particularly directed at pregnant women, whose exposure to Zika could result in microcephaly, a birth defect in which babies have abnormally small heads that may signal that the brain is not properly developing.
The health department is continuing its door-to-door outreach and mosquito testing in Pinellas, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties.
Without additional funding, Frieden said, the CDC won’t be able to undertake key projects to better understand and control the virus, including Zika’s longterm impact on infants and diagnostics to identify if a person has been previously infected. However, health officials don’t expect widespread outbreaks to occur in the United States. The FDA issues such Emergency Use Authorization during public health emergencies.
The next step is animal testing. then the long process of human testing.
The Zika outbreak began in Brazil in the spring of 2015.
Advertisement
America’s Blood Centers, a network of 63 blood centers with 600 donation sites in 45 US states, is now testing for Zika primarily in Florida, where local transmission has been reported.
