Zika vaccine is years away – USA researcher

“There have been no reported attempts to make a vaccine for Zika virus to date”. If they must travel, they should take steps to avoid mosquito bites.

“Increasing lines of evidence suggest that some women who are infected with Zika during their pregnancy may go on to deliver a baby with a serious brain injury”, Schuchat said. But the United States never had large outbreaks of these viruses, and the CDC said it does not expect large outbreaks of Zika virus here either.

The Zika virus may infect 3 to 4 million people in the Americas, including 1.5 million in Brazil, the World Health Organisation has said.

Houses in the United States are also more likely to have window screens and air conditioning, and so people have less exposure to mosquitoes here, Schuchat said.

The virus often results in mild symptoms including fever, conjunctivitis and rash, but the new outbreak has been associated with a rise in the rare birth defect microcephaly. The CDC continues to urge pregnant women not to travel to affected areas. These are Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, Suriname, Venezuela, Barbados, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guadeloupe, Saint Martin, Guyana, Cape Verde, Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Dominican Republic.

Fauci added that his agency is now accelerating researching in the virus and is seeking proposals for studies of the basic biology of Zika, its pathogenesis, animal models, and diagnostic platforms.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) on Thursday sent a letter to Anthony Fauci, the director for the national institute of allergy and infectious diseases (NIAID), asking that he “prioritize research” for a potential vaccine to the virus. USA officials said that the vaccine would not be ready for several years.

University of Texas researchers in Galveston are already attempting to develop a vaccine and there is hope one might be ready for testing in two years, but it could be a decade before it is deemed safe enough for humans.

And right now, he told reporters in a telephone briefing, the average stay-at-home American faces “essentially no risk at all” of catching the virus because it is not circulating in the U.S.

“Zika is not new”, Schuchat said, “but seeing it in the Americas is new”.

But that won’t come soon, he said, although a candidate drug might be available for phase I clinical trials late this year. The WHO will hold an emergency meeting of independent experts on Monday to decide whether the outbreak should be declared an global health emergency.