Zika vaccines at least 18 months away from broad trials

Feb 13, 2016, 05:15

Fifteen people have been tested for Zika virus so far in SC, state health officials said Friday.

Marie-Paule Kieny, WHO's assistant director-general for health systems and innovation, says the United Nations health agency's response is "proceeding very quickly" and that 15 companies or groups have been identified as possible participants in the hunt for vaccines.

The second most-affected country, Colombia, last week announced three deaths of Zika-infected patients who had also contracted Guillain-Barre syndrome - a neurological disease that can cause paralysis in humans.

Beginning this week, testing for the virus has been done in state labs as opposed to at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, he said.

Friday's revelation coincides with a release from the Australian Federal Police (AFP), which detailed a number of cases which involved its officers contracting the disease while stationed in affected countries previous year.

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There is as yet no definitive proof of a relationship between Zika and microcephaly.

None of those involved pregnant women, whose babies may be at higher risk to deformities if infected and none were transmitted within Florida.

Earlier this week, mounting medical evidence suggested doctors were close to concluding that Zika was responsible for a spike in Brazilian cases of microcephaly, after the virus was found in the brain tissue of babies with the impairment who had died.

The Zika virus does not in itself pose much of a problem.

A fast test for Zika won't answer all questions or relieve all worries, said Peter Hotez, dean of Baylor College of Medicine's National School of Tropical Medicine in Houston.

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As for women who plan to become pregnant in the future, Dr. Frieden says, "if this behaves like other viruses, infection with Zika before pregnancy would not have an impact on subsequent pregnancies".

Two more cases of the Zika virus have been reported in OH, one involving a Licking County man who was in Haiti. "We could have a pandemic in the Americas with four million people infected by the Zika virus".

The FDOH has put every county with a confirmed case of Zika under a public health emergency, so Alachua County has now joined that list.

The mosquito that carries the Zika virus, aedes aegypti, has "a cousin here in NY called the Asian Tiger", she said. The virus is spread through mosquito bites.

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