Major Zika Outbreak in the US Unlikely, Health Official Says

The scare triggered by the Zika virus has spread far from Brazil and is now prevalent in more than 20 countries, posing a threat to babies born to infected mothers. Privately owned vaccine developer Hawaii Biotech Inc said it began a formal program to test a Zika vaccine last fall as the virus started to gain traction in Brazil, although it has no timetable yet for clinical trials. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has activated an emergency operations center staffed around the clock to address Zika, agency officials told Reuters.

He said another reason those regions have been so hard hit is that Zika is more commonly passed along among the kind of mosquitoes there, a species not as widespread in the United States.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned that the Zika virus is “spreading explosively” in the Americas and can infect up to four million people worldwide. If successful, the vaccine might be used during a public health emergency by October or November, said Kobinger, who helped develop a trial vaccine for the Ebola virus.

“The highest level of virus in your system only lasts for a couple of days and then dissipates”. There is no vaccine or treatment for Zika, which is like dengue and causes mild fever, rash and red eyes.

Kobinger, the lead scientist on this project from Quebec City’s Laval University and head of special pathogens at Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, is working with the University of Pennsylvania, led by scientist David Weiner, Inovio Pharmaceuticals and South Korea’s GeneOne Life Science.

“I believe this will be the first to go into human testing”.

Fauci told reporters that a large outbreak is “not something that we expect to see”. Inovio alone jumped 15.6 percent to $ 6.68, while GlaxoSmithKline rose 1.6 percent to $41.29 and Sanofi surged 1.7 percent to $41.64, in light of the potential Zika Virus vaccine.

Other vaccine candidates appear to be moving more slowly. Recently, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institutes for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, spoke on the reality of the progress in producing a vaccine for the Zika Virus. Venezuela has recorded 4,700 suspected cases of people infected by the Zika virus, which is thought to cause brain damage in babies.