NC health officials report first case of travel-related Zika

People often have trouble remembering every detail from six months ago – for example, when they might have been bitten by mosquitoes, the primary source of Zika infections.

“That will be the first one to tell us if there’s strong evidence”, Dr. Marcos Espinal of the Pan American Health Organization told reporters Thursday.

The Entomological Society of America (ESA) is meeting next month for a one-day summit in Brazil to address the challenge of managing the aedes aegypti mosquito. The virus is typically spread by mosquito bites.

Dr. Bruce Aylward, WHO’s executive director for outbreaks and health emergencies, says the mosquito population is expected to drop off in the area around Rio since it will be the southern hemisphere’s winter by then.

The WHO is also convening experts in vector-borne diseases in the next three to four weeks to study “innovative tools” to control mosquitoes that carry the virus, WHO’s expert Pedro Alonso said.

“Brazil is going to have a fantastic Olympics and it’s going to be a successful Olympics and the world is going to go there”, Aylward said.

It is believed that between 500,000 and 1.5 million Brazilians have been infected by Zika virus but only a few deaths from the disease have been reported.

One of the puzzling questions facing researchers: Why have so many severe health problems been reported in Brazil, but comparatively few in other Latin America or Caribbean countries with Zika? The country is coping with its worst recession in 100 years, impeachment proceedings against President Dilma Rousseff and a wide-ranging corruption scandal centered on the state-controlled oil-and-gas giant Petrobras.

Brazil is at the heart of an global scare over Zika, which has been linked to the serious birth defect microcephaly in babies born to infected women.

Given the frequency of travel between South Africa and a number of countries now experiencing outbreaks of the Zika virus, it was likely that other sporadic imported cases would be seen in South Africa in travellers, as had been the experience in a number of countries, Motsoaledi said. But how big of a concern is Zika virus for Asia?

Another method being studied is infecting mosquitos with a bacteria, the Wolbachia, that does not infect humans and that can prevent mosquito eggs from hatching and can reduce a mosquito’s ability to transmit a virus.

“A lot can be done in terms of reducing the intensity of Zika transmission and the accumulating evidence is that this has got to be done and done very, very urgently, because there is a very real possibility that this virus could be responsible for some of the horrific consequences we’ve been talking about in terms of children affected by this disease”, he said.