Genetically modified mosquitoes that would help fight the Zika virus are getting urgent attention from USA regulators as global health officials raise alarms about the pathogen’s spread.
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Union health minister JP Nadda on Friday convened a high-level meeting to discuss the ongoing spread of Zika virus that has affected almost 25 countries in the south and central America.
This recent outbreak has coincided with a large uptick in cases of microcephaly, a developmental condition in which affected children are born with abnormally small heads and underdeveloped brains.
Pregnant women who tested positive for the Zika virus and later had babies with microcephaly had experienced a rash and fever during the “first and second parts of their pregnancy”, he said.
Health officials say a patient in Texas has acquired the Zika virus through sexual transmission.
Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), visualized by HealthGrove, shows the slow creep of the virus from the top of South America up to Mexico. About 80% of those who get the virus won’t have symptoms, making it hard to tell whether a pregant woman has been infected. “During the mosquito season, still use precautions to prevent things like that and other illnesses but with (the Zika) virus, you don’t have to worry about it up here”.
“It’s been in Africa and Asia for 50 years, and only in the last few years has been introduced into the Americas and has been spreading like wildfire”.
The United States has two potential candidates for a Zika vaccine and may begin clinical trials in people by the end of this year, but there will not be a widely available vaccine for several years, USA officials said on Thursday.
“We need to look at Zika virus in its context, as the latest in a series of mosquito-borne diseases that have expanded their reach in the last 20 years or so”, Fauci said.
There is no vaccine for the virus at the present.
The agency is working with Brazil’s government to set up a rigorous study of Zika’s association with microcephaly and is already collaborating on research into a link with Guillain-Barre, a rare disorder in which a person’s immune system attacks nerve cells. They report that 1 in 5 people infected with the virus, become ill.
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She Brazil will lose the war against the insect unless all of society mobilizes to eliminate the pools of stagnant water that serve as the mosquito’s breeding grounds.
