But there is some hope on the horizon: The National Institutes of Health just started the first human trials for an experimental vaccine for Zika. Even through the researchers are about to get human trials underway, a market-ready version of any of the three vaccines could still be up to a few years from deployment. Blood samples will be collected at two follow-up visit to assess “durability of the immune response” to the vaccine: one after 18 months, and a second after 24 months of initial vaccine administration.
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Three different ways of designing a vaccine have been shown to be completely protective against the Zika virus.
“This vaccine includes a small piece of DNA with genes that code for Zika-virus proteins”, Fauci said. Fauci, who has previously warned that any vaccine against Zika would take years to develop, described the trial’s launch as “an important step forward”.
Florida is now dealing with the reality of the Zika virus being spread by mosquitoes in Miami, a prospect that could lead to an epidemic and spread ups through the peninsula.
“It’s an area that’s not all of one type or another type, and that does make mosquito control more hard because you need to tailor the mosquito-control activities to the specifics of the area to get rid of breeding sites and apply larvicide and insecticide effectively”, Frieden said.
On the official website of NIH, they ensure that the DNA vaccines have no infectious material.
“Results from both mouse and non-human primate testing are encouraging and support a decision to advance our vaccine candidate to human trials”, said Col. Stephen Thomas, an infectious disease Army physician and a vaccinologist at the WRAIR.
As of July 21, 433 pregnant women in the states and 422 in USA territories have shown “laboratory evidence of possible Zika virus infection”, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
She also noted that while all three vaccines were effective, the DNA vaccine “perform (ed) less well at inducing immune responses in monkeys”.
After their first injection, participants of the study will return to check-ups for the next 44 weeks to evaluate their health and the vaccine’s effectiveness. Most residents may already be immune to the virus in endemic areas as well.
The CDC this week issued a travel advisory to part of Miami, telling pregnant women they should not travel to parts of the city where Zika has been found.
Mosquito-borne Zika is considered a mild infection for most people, but is now considered the cause of microcephaly, which stunts the growth of babies’ heads and brains. Doctors can’t prescribe medicine to prevent the virus, but several organizations have started testing vaccines on humans.
Zika can cause damages within the first three months of pregnancy. In the US alone, about 6,400 Zika virus infection cases have already been reported.
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In a second experiment, 12 rhesus monkeys were immunized with either a DNA vaccine or an adenovirus vector-based vaccine.
