Tag Archives: Zika Virus

Zika crisis pressures Vatican to soften contraception stance

RECIFE, Brazil (Reuters) – On the frontline of Brazil’s fight against Zika, Vandson Holanda sends Roman Catholic volunteers into the poorest areas of this city, showing residents how to protect themselves against mosquitoes that carry the virus linked to birth defects.

Get rid of trash where water accumulates and allows the mosquitoes to lay eggs. Wear plenty of repellant and clothing that covers arms and legs. Close shower drains so the insects cannot find pooled water inside your home.

But there are no lessons offered on methods to avoid getting pregnant, which Brazilian officials and international public health experts have urged women to do until the Zika epidemic is under control.

The crisis is putting pressure on Church doctrine that bans all forms of contraception, and has even stoked a debate over abortion in many conservative Latin American nations.

“I think, and this is my personal opinion, that the Church will have to re-think its position on contraception urgently as a result of Zika,” said Holanda, coordinator of the Church’s health committee in four northeastern states at the center of the epidemic.

“The current view is not realistic.”

On Thursday, Pope Francis appeared to suggest the Church could soften its ban on contraception for women as they face the Zika crisis.

“Avoiding pregnancy is not an absolute evil” Francis told reporters on the papal plane as it returned to Rome following his tour of Mexico.

He said there is a precedent of exceptional dispensations allowing women to use contraception, citing a decades-old case of Pope Paul VI permitting nuns in Africa to use birth control pills because they risked being raped in political conflicts.

The pope did not elaborate further and did not indicate if the faithful who want to avoid pregnancies amid a Zika epidemic would have the Church’s explicit blessing to do so or if priests at the local level would just look the other way, at least until the Zika situation becomes clearer.

Francis did make clear there would be no change to the Church’s position on abortion. “It is a crime. It is an absolute evil.”

Much remains unknown about Zika, including whether it actually causes microcephaly, a condition marked by abnormally small head size that often results in neurological and developmental problems. Brazil is investigating the potential link between Zika and nearly 4,500 suspected cases of microcephaly.

Researchers have identified evidence of Zika infection in most of 508 confirmed microcephaly cases, either in the baby or in the mother, the health ministry said Wednesday, but have not confirmed that Zika was the cause.

Ahead of Francis’ visit to Mexico, a senior Vatican official said he did not expect any change to the Church’s position on birth control and Catholic scholars also said it was unlikely.

“I find it quite amazing that there has been so much attention given to contraception, birth control and abortion legislation regarding Zika, when I think much more attention should be given to the source of the Zika problem, which are mosquitoes,” said Father Robert Gahl, professor of ethics at the Pontifical Holy Cross University in Rome.

In cases of Zika infection, the Church’s focus would be on providing a woman with the best health care possible to either avoid being infected in the first place or to care for a child with birth defects, along with pushing abstinence, he said.

CONTRACEPTION ‘WILL NOT SOLVE’ ZIKA CRISIS

In Colombia, facing a Zika crisis nearly as acute as Brazil’s, Danelia Cardona, a psychologist who is the director of the nation’s Episcopal Conference’s Department for the Promotion and Defense of Life, said questioning the Church’s position on contraception was not useful as women already make their own decisions on the matter.

She added that contraception “will not solve the Zika crisis” – only the eradication of the virus-carrying mosquitoes would.

Cardinal Odilo Scherer, the archbishop of Sao Paulo and widely considered a leading contender to be elected pope three years ago, has appeared to offer openings for the use of condoms when it comes to halting the spread of disease, though in an emailed response to Reuters he emphasized the fight against Zika must focus on getting rid of the mosquitoes, avoiding bites and caring for those who have birth defects.

Fernando Altemeyer, a theology professor at the Catholic University of Sao Paulo and a former priest, said Zika is unquestionably sparking debate about contraception within the Church.

“Zika has put humanity in crisis and if it worsens it will force the Church to make a decision on saving human life versus saving its own dogma … There is no easy answer, there really is nothing in canon law to act as a guide,” he said.

“Zika is putting at risk the most innocent – unborn children – so it would be entirely adequate that the Church shift its position on contraceptives for this case.”

About 65 percent of Brazilians are Catholics and polls consistently show more than three-fourths of the population reject changes to laws that only allow abortion in the case of rape, if the mother’s life is in danger or in the case of anencephaly, when a fetus would be born missing parts of its brain and skull and a quick death after birth is almost certain.

But polls also show Brazilians overwhelmingly approve of using condoms when it comes to preventing pregnancies or diseases.

“As a Catholic, I’m against abortion, but ideally the Church would allow more options for women who want to prevent getting pregnant in the first place,” said Debora Mariano, a 23-year-old beautician and mother of a 6-year-old boy, as she took a work break in central Rio de Janeiro this week.

“It feels like we have little protection against Zika, that government efforts to stop it are not working, so those of us too scared to get pregnant with this illness out there have no other option but to go against the Church.”

(Additional reporting by Brad Brooks in Rio de Janeiro, Philip Pullella in Rome and Julia Cobb in Bogota; Writing by Daniel Flynn and Brad Brooks; Editing by Kieran Murray)

Zika vaccine shows promise in mice

(Reuters) – Hopes of developing a vaccine against Zika took a small step forward on Wednesday as Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc said its experimental shot had induced a robust and durable response in mice.

Shares in the U.S. biotech firm, which expects to test its product in humans before the end of the year, jumped 7 percent in premarket trading on the prospect of it developing a vaccine against the mosquito-borne disease.

At least 15 companies and academic groups are currently racing to develop Zika vaccines, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), spurred on by growing public concern over the virus sweeping across the Americas.

Zika, whose symptoms include mild fever and rash, has been linked to brain damage in thousands of babies in Brazil, although the connection is not yet proven.

There is no proven treatment or vaccine for the disease, a close cousin of the viruses that cause dengue, chikungunya and West Nile fever.

Inovio said in a statement that mice given its vaccine showed the development of antibodies and generated a response from T-cells, which play an important role in immunizing the body.

“We will next test the vaccine in non-human primates and initiate clinical product manufacturing. We plan to initiate Phase I human testing of our Zika vaccine before the end of 2016,” Inovio Chief Executive Joseph Kim said.

Phase I is the first stage in a three-step process of testing new medicines and involves giving an experimental product to healthy volunteers.

Inovio’s DNA-based vaccine is being developed with South Korea’s GeneOne Life Sciences Inc and academic collaborators. One Canadian collaborator told Reuters last month that vaccine testing on humans could begin as early as August.

Other organizations with relatively advanced Zika vaccine projects include India’s Bharat Biotech, which said earlier this month that its experimental vaccine would start pre-clinical trials in animals imminently.

The U.S. National Institutes for Health is also working on another DNA vaccine, while France’s Sanofi, which makes the world’s first vaccine for dengue, said on Feb. 2 it was launching a Zika project.

Despite the accelerated work program, however, the WHO estimates it will still be at least 18 months before any Zika vaccines are ready to be tested in large-scale clinical trials.

Much remains unknown about Zika, including whether the virus actually causes microcephaly, a condition marked by an abnormally small head size in newborns, although the WHO believes the suspected link could be confirmed within weeks.

Brazil is investigating the potential link between Zika infections and more than 4,300 suspected microcephaly cases.

An estimated 80 percent of people with Zika have no symptoms, making it difficult for pregnant women to know whether they have been infected.

Experts say the developing of a useable preventative shot against the disease will not be simple, particularly due to concerns surrounding the safety of vaccinating pregnant women.

(Reporting by Ben Hirschler in London and Amrutha Penumudi in Bengaluru; Editing by Kirti Pandey, Greg Mahlich)

WHO backs new weapons in fight against Zika virus

LONDON (Reuters) – Countries battling the Zika virus should consider new ways to curb disease-carrying mosquitoes, including testing the release of genetically modified insects and bacteria that stop their eggs hatching, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday.

“Given the magnitude of the Zika crisis, WHO encourages affected countries and their partners to boost the use of both old and new approaches to mosquito control as the most immediate line of defence,” it said.

The WHO also highlighted the potential of releasing sterile irradiated male mosquitoes, a technique that has been developed at the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Zika, which is now sweeping the Americas, is transmitted primarily by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which the U.N. health body described as an “opportunistic and tenacious menace”.

Many scientists believe Zika could be linked to microcephaly, or abnormally small heads, in newborns and a serious neurological disorder in adults called Guillain-Barre syndrome.

“If these presumed associations are confirmed, the human and social consequences for the over 30 countries with recently detected Zika outbreaks will be staggering,” the WHO said.

Fighting the infection at source by eliminating the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes responsible for transmission is moving up the public health agenda, especially as the same insects also spread dengue, chikungunya and yellow fever.

However, the concept of wiping out an entire mosquito species also raises serious ecological questions, since it runs counter to preserving biodiversity.

Still, insect control expert Jo Lines at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has few qualms. “This is an invasive species, so getting rid of these mosquitoes would, if anything, restore the natural ecology, not destroy it,” he told Reuters.

Like rats and pigeons, Lines argues, Aedes aegypti has adapted perfectly to modern urban living by breeding in everything from discarded bottle tops and used car tyres to pet water bowls and vases in cemeteries.

As a result, the diseases it carries are likely to be a growing threat to humankind in the years ahead.

BEYOND SPRAYING

While spraying or “fogging” with insecticide can provide part of the solution, WHO experts said they recommended evaluating newer tools, including a genetically modified prototype mosquito developed by Oxitec, the British subsidiary of Intrexon.

The male mosquitoes are modified so their offspring will die before reaching adulthood and being able to reproduce.

The WHO said its Vector Control Advisory Group recommended further field trials of the technique, following promising previous tests in the Cayman Islands.

Another option involves the mass release of male insects that have been sterilised by low doses of radiation, which the IAEA has already used to control tsetse fly in parts of Africa.

An alternative approach uses Wolbachia bacteria, which do not infect humans but cause the eggs of females that mate with infected males to fail to hatch. Mosquitoes carrying Wolbachia have been shown to reduce mosquitoes’ ability to transmit dengue.

The WHO said large-scale field trials of Wolbachia bacteria would be started soon.

Much remains unknown about Zika, including whether the virus actually causes microcephaly. The WHO believes the suspected link could be confirmed within weeks.

Brazil is investigating more than 4,300 suspected cases of microcephaly. Researchers have confirmed more than 460 of these cases as microcephaly and identified evidence of Zika infection in 41 of them.

There is no specific treatment for a Zika and it will be at least 18 months before any vaccines are tested in large-scale clinical trials, the WHO estimates.

(Additional reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Alison Williams)

Zika virus outbreak may not change abortion in Brazil

RECIFE (Reuters) – Six months pregnant with her first child, Eritania Maria has a rash and a mild fever, symptoms of the Zika virus linked to brain deformities in newborn children in Brazil.

But the 17-year-old is too scared to take a test to confirm if she has Zika.

Like other women in the slums of Recife, which squat on stilts over mosquito-ridden marshland in northeast Brazil, Maria has few options if her child develops microcephaly, the condition marked by an abnormally small head and underdeveloped brain that has been linked to Zika.

Brazil has amongst the toughest abortion laws in the world and is culturally conservative. Even if she wanted an illegal abortion and could afford one, Maria is too heavily pregnant for a doctor to risk it. So she prefers not to know.

“I’m too scared of finding out my baby will be sick,” she told Reuters, her belly poking out from beneath a yellow top.

The Zika outbreak has revived the debate about easing abortion laws but Maria’s case highlights a gap between campaigners and U.N. officials calling for change and Brazil’s poor, who are worst affected by the mosquito-borne virus yet tend to be anti-abortion.

Add a conservative Congress packed with Evangelical Christians staunchly opposed to easing restrictions, plus the difficulty of identifying microcephaly early enough to safely abort, and hopes for change seem likely to be frustrated.

As with many countries in mostly Roman Catholic Latin America, Brazil has outlawed abortion except in cases of rape, when the mother’s life is at risk or the child is too sick to survive.

An estimated 850,000 women in Brazil have illegal abortions every year, many under dangerous conditions. They can face up to 3 years in prison although in practice, jail terms are extremely rare.

With two-thirds of the population Catholic and support for Evangelicals growing fast, polls show Brazilians oppose changing the law. A survey by pollster VoxPopuli in 2010 showed that 82 percent reject decriminalization, while a Datafolha poll the same year put the figure at 72 percent.

Vandson Holanda, head of health for the Catholic Church in Brazil’s northeast, said there was no chance the Church would shift its position on abortion because of Zika.

Suspected cases of microcephaly have topped more than 4,000 – with more than 400 of those confirmed so far – since Zika was first detected in April. Around one-third of the suspected cases are in Pernambuco state around Recife.

The figures, which compare with around 150 cases across Brazil in a normal year, show no signs of slowing.

While there is no scientific proof of a connection between Zika and microcephaly, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak a global emergency this month, citing a “strongly suspected” link. The virus has spread to 26 countries in the Americas since arriving in Brazil.

Women’s rights groups in Brazil such as Anis plan to appeal to the Supreme Court to relax Brazil’s abortion laws. They hope to build on a successful case in 2012 that legalized abortion for anencephaly, where the fetus develops without a major part of its brain and skull.

Given the difficulty of identifying microcephaly before the final weeks of pregnancy, Sinara Gumieri, a legal advisor to Anis, said the group would petition the court to legalize abortion for women diagnosed with Zika whose child was at risk of the condition, even if it is not diagnosed in the fetus. She admitted it would be difficult.

The doctors who led the anencephaly campaign in 2012 do not expect its success to be repeated.

“It’s completely different,” said Eugenio Pita, a doctor in Recife who performed legal abortions through the public health system for 20 years. “With anencephaly, the baby does not live; an abortion is only speeding up the inevitable. Babies born with microcephaly usually survive.”

CONSERVATIVE CONGRESS TIGHTENING LAW

Legislative reforms seem even more unlikely. A 2014 election returned a more conservative Congress, packed with Evangelicals, who account for roughly a fifth of Brazil’s 200 million people.

The speaker of the lower house, Eduardo Cunha, elected with the backing of Evangelical congressmen, has proposed legislation to make it harder to get an abortion in cases of alleged rape, sparking protests across Brazil last year.

Hundreds of Brazilian women die or are seriously injured each year in botched illegal abortions involving improvised equipment — mostly women not wealthy enough to travel abroad or pay for a proper doctor.

“Illegal abortions bring with them serious risks, the complications of which we have to pay careful attention to,” said Jailson Correia, Recife’s health secretary, calling for a national debate on liberalizing the law.

So far, there is inconclusive evidence that Zika has led to a rise in abortions. The website Women on Web, an Amsterdam-based charity that has offered to send free abortion pills to pregnant women infected with Zika, said email requests from Brazil asking about the service tripled last week.

The pills can be used to terminate pregnancy in the first 12 weeks.

But a for-profit online service, Aborto na Nuvem, said it reported no change beyond a usual 15-20 percent monthly increase the site has registered since it launched last year. Its co-founder, Heinrick Per, said the service was mainly used by wealthy Brazilians and he did not expect to see a rise because of Zika.

DETECTED LATE

With state-of-the-art equipment, experts say signs of microcephaly may be detected from about 24 weeks but it is impossible to determine how severe a case it might be. In Brazil, if identified before birth at all, it is usually registered at 30 to 32 weeks, by which time most doctors will not perform an illegal abortion.

“After 12 weeks it is hard to find a doctor to do an illegal abortion in Brazil. After 24 weeks, it’s impossible,” said Dr Elias Melo, a leading obstetrician at Hospital das Clinicas in Recife.

Though they are rarely prosecuted, doctors can face up to 10 years in prison.

“It’s not just a legal thing, it is cultural as well,” Melo said, noting that by 30 to 32 weeks you have a 2 kilogram (4.4 lb) baby that could survive if removed from the womb.

Complicating matters, as many as 80 percent of people with Zika do not show symptoms and there is no quick and reliable test for the virus widely available.

As a result, some women may opt for preemptive abortions early in pregnancy to avoid the risk of microcephaly, experts say.

French historian of science Ilana Löwy draws parallels with rubella in Britain and France in the 1950s, when abortion was illegal yet the number of terminated pregnancies rose dramatically.

Yet unlike with rubella, where up to 85 percent of fetuses infected in early pregnancy develop defects, doctors so far have no proof that Zika causes microcephaly, let alone an idea of its likelihood.

“Half of my 50 patients had Zika-like symptoms at some stage of their pregnancy,” said Melo. “Not one of them had a child born with microcephaly.”

Still, a dramatic rise in microcephaly cases could put a huge burden on poor families and public health services already under strain.

At a hospital in Recife, Gabriela Falcao cradles her 2 month old baby who was born with microcephaly and twisted legs as she waits to see a doctor.

“If I could go back, I still wouldn’t have an abortion,” she said. “I hold out hope my baby will grow to be like other kids.”

(Additional reporting by Ueslei Marcelino; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Kieran Murray)

Obama seeks funds to fight Zika, sees no cause for panic

WASHINGTON/LONDON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama will ask the U.S. Congress for more than $1.8 billion in emergency funds to fight Zika at home and abroad and pursue a vaccine, the White House said on Monday, but he added there is no reason to panic over the mosquito-borne virus.

Zika, spreading rapidly in South and Central America and the Caribbean, has been linked to severe birth defects in Brazil, and public health officials’ concern is focused on pregnant women and women who may become pregnant.

Obama’s request to Congress includes $200 million for research, development and commercialization of new vaccines and diagnostic tests for the virus.

At least 12 groups are working to develop a vaccine. On Monday, the London-based European Medicines Agency (EMA), Europe’s drugs regulator, said it established an expert task force to advise companies working on Zika vaccines and medicines, mirroring similar action during the two-year-long Ebola epidemic that started in December 2013 and the pandemic flu outbreak in 2009.

There are no vaccines or treatment for Zika and none even undergoing clinical studies. Most infected people either have no symptoms or develop mild ones like fever and skin rashes.

“The good news is this is not like Ebola; people don’t die of Zika. A lot of people get it and don’t even know that they have it,” Obama told CBS News in an interview aired on Monday. “But there shouldn’t be panic on this. This is not something where people are going to die from it. It is something we have to take seriously.”

Most of the money sought by Obama, who faces pressure from Republicans and some fellow Democrats to act decisively on Zika, would be spent in the United States on testing, surveillance and response in affected areas, including the creation of rapid-response teams to contain outbreak clusters.

At a White House briefing, Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said she was not expecting “large-scale amounts of serious Zika infections” in the continental United States as warmer months bring larger and more active mosquito populations.

“We do think it’s likely that we will have limited local transmission in some of the southern states,” Schuchat said.

Obama’s funding request to Congress includes $335 million for the U.S. Agency for International Development to support mosquito-control, maternal health and other Zika-related public health efforts in affected countries in the Americas.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told the White House briefing a vaccine likely would not be widely available “for a few years.”

Fauci said he anticipated beginning a so-called Phase 1 trial this summer for a Zika vaccine that would take about three months to test if it is safe and induces a good immune response before further studies can be conducted.

The CDC said its Zika emergency operations center, with a staff of 300, has been placed on its highest level of activation, reflecting a need for accelerated preparedness for possible local virus transmission by mosquitoes in the continental United States.

Some lawmakers have urged Obama to name a Zika “czar” to head U.S. efforts against the virus, but Fauci said he sees no need right now for such an appointment.

MICROCEPHALY CONCERNS

Much remains unknown about Zika, including whether the virus actually causes microcephaly, a condition marked by abnormally small head size that can result in developmental problems.

Brazil is investigating the potential link between Zika infections and more than 4,000 suspected cases of microcephaly. Researchers have identified evidence of Zika infection in 17 of these cases, either in the baby or in the mother, but have not confirmed that Zika can cause microcephaly.

Word that Zika can be spread by sexual transmission and blood transfusions and its discovery in saliva and urine of infected people have added to concern over the virus.

The World Health Organization declared the outbreak an international health emergency on Feb. 1, citing a “strongly suspected” relationship between Zika infection in pregnancy to microcephaly.

Brazil is grappling with the virus even as it prepares to host the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro in August, with tens of thousands of athletes and tourists anticipated.

The U.S. Olympic Committee has told U.S. sports federations that athletes and staff concerned about their health due to Zika should consider not going to the Olympics.

The message was delivered in a conference call involving USOC officials and leaders of U.S. sports federations in late January.

Former Olympian Donald Anthony, president and board chairman of USA Fencing, said, “One of the things that they immediately said was, especially for women that may be pregnant or even thinking of getting pregnant, that whether you are scheduled to go to Rio or no, that you shouldn’t go.”

At the White House, Fauci said athletes would need to make a personal decision about whether or not to skip the Olympics.

(Additional reporting by Susan Heavey, Megan Cassella, Roberta Rampton and Doina Chiacu in Washington; Ben Hirschler in London, Daniel Bases and Joshua Schneyer in New York, Anthony Esposito and Felipe Iturrieta in Santiago; Writing by Will Dunham; Editing by Frances Kerry and Grant McCool)

Inadequate testing thwarts efforts to measure Zika’s impact

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – One major hurdle is thwarting efforts to measure the extent of the Zika epidemic and its suspected links to thousands of birth defects in Brazil: accurate diagnosis of a virus that still confounds blood tests.

Genetic tests and clinical symptoms have enabled scientists to partially track Zika, and Brazil guesses up to 1.5 million people have been infected in the country.

The World Health Organization says as many as 4 million people could become infected across the Americas and that Zika has already been locally transmitted in at least 30 countries.

But a true measure of the outbreak and its implications is impossible until doctors can quickly and reliably identify Zika through serology, a common test of blood contents that measures antibodies triggered in the immune system by a given infection.

Laboratories in Brazil, the United States and elsewhere are rushing to develop serology tests that can accurately identify Zika antibodies while ignoring those triggered by other related viruses with similar structures. For years, the similarities have confused serology research.

Brazil’s government, desperate for tests to deploy at clinics and hospitals across the continent-sized country, hopes such a test could be developed in months.

Many researchers are skeptical.

“The likelihood of this happening soon is close to zero,” says Robert Lanciotti, chief of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s diagnostics laboratory in Fort Collins, Colorado. “It is a long-standing problem that many people have been unable to solve even with cutting-edge molecular biology.”

At stake is knowing just who may have carried an infection that does not even show symptoms in four out of five people who get it. Even for those that do get the aches, mild fever and rash most associated with Zika, the symptoms can easily be confused with those of other tropical maladies.

Sure diagnoses would also enable scientists to better understand suspected links to microcephaly, a condition marked by abnormally small head size that can result in development problems.

Brazilian officials believe Zika may be associated with more than 4,000 suspected cases of microcephaly since October. Researchers have identified evidence of Zika infection in 17 cases, either in the baby or in the mother, but have not confirmed that Zika can cause microcephaly

The lack of clear diagnoses is part of the reason that the number of confirmed links between Zika and microcephaly lags so far behind the number of those suspected.

“The testing available now is very limiting because we need to know far more about who actually had this infection to be able to research the virus and its complications,” says Claudia Nunes dos Santos, a researcher on Zika serology and the director of molecular virology at a lab operated by the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, a prominent government health institute, in Curitiba, in southern Brazil.

VIRAL RESEMBLANCE

So far, confirmed cases of Zika have been proven by so-called PCR tests, which identify genetic material from the virus but are available only at major laboratories and can only be used during the few days when the virus is causing symptoms in patients.

Serology, on the other hand, is used widely at most hospitals and for many viruses can detect antibodies for months or years after an infection.

With Zika and the related family of flaviviruses, which cause yellow fever, West Nile, dengue and several other tropical illnesses, serology stumbles because of resemblance among a protein they share.

The resemblance causes so-called “cross reactions” when searching for antibodies, meaning that past infection by any one of the viruses can make it seem as if a patient had one of the others.

In a country where dengue is prevalent, and many people have taken yellow fever vaccines, the problem to date has been intractable. The most advanced methods so far, which use a technique called neutralization to measure specific antibodies, still fail when used on samples from people with previous flavivirus infections.

“There is a test, but it’s not a good test,” says Mauricio Lacerda Nogueira, head of the virology lab at the São Jose do Rio Preto medical school in the state of São Paulo. “It’s not going to work with someone who has been exposed to related viruses.”

Still, some researchers are optimistic, arguing that the urgency of the Zika outbreak is leading to more concentrated research by a greater number of scientists.

Some small private laboratories say they have already developed more accurate serology for Zika, even though none has gone through the rigorous process of validation by the scientific community and regulators.

Such validation is essential not just to determine the reliability of a test’s claims, but also to measure them using geographic, genetic and other variables.

And while partial progress may be welcome for epidemiological purposes, such as calculating the number of cases and determining the rate of contagion, doctors and patients need certainty to make clinical decisions.

That is a particularly difficult issue when it comes to an illness that may make some pregnant women, after testing positive, want to consider abortions – especially in Brazil and many other countries in Latin America where terminating pregnancies is illegal.

“You have to be careful of what the implications are,” says Michael Diamond, a physician who researches flaviviruses at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. “The threshold for clinical decisions must be high.”

(Additional reporting by Brad Brooks and Anthony Boadle; Editing by Kieran Murray)

Florida governor declares health emergency in four counties over Zika virus

TAMPA, Fla. (Reuters) – Florida Governor Rick Scott declared a public health emergency in four counties with travel-related cases of the Zika virus on Wednesday, and ordered state officials to increase mosquito control efforts in some of the most populous parts of the state.

“Although Florida’s current nine Zika cases were travel-related, we have to ensure Florida is prepared and stays ahead of the spread of the Zika virus in our state,” Scott said in a statement.

The counties are Miami-Dade in south Florida, Hillsborough in the Tampa Bay region, Lee County in southwest Florida and Santa Rosa County in the Florida Panhandle.

Scott directed the state’s surgeon general to declare the public health emergency, and for state officials to pay special attention to mosquito spraying in residential areas in those counties.

Florida is the third most populous state in the country.

The mosquito-borne virus, which is rapidly spreading in the Americas, has been linked to a spike in birth defects in thousands of babies in Brazil.

The World Health Organization declared a global health emergency on Feb. 1, citing a “strongly suspected” relationship between Zika infection in pregnancy and microcephaly, a condition marked by abnormally small head size that can cause permanent brain damage in newborns.

Scott noted in an executive order that the type of mosquito that transmits Zika is common in Florida, where a warm climate provides for a nearly year-round mosquito season. The virus, first identified in 1947 in Uganda, is spread by the Aedes aegypti mosquito.

(Reporting by Letitia Stein; Editing by Bernard Orr)

First U.S. Zika virus transmission reported, sexual transmission cited

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) – The first known case of Zika virus transmission in the United States was reported in Texas on Tuesday by local health officials, who said it was contracted through sexual contact and not the bite of a mosquito, a day after the World Health Organization declared an international public health emergency.

Dallas County Health and Human Services said it received confirmation of the case in Dallas from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A Dallas County health official said in a tweet that the case was transmitted through sexual contact with someone who had traveled to Venezuela. The person infected did not travel to the South American country, county health officials said.

County authorities said there were no reports of the virus being locally transmitted by mosquitoes in the Texas county.

A CDC spokesman confirmed the results of a test for Zika infection but said local officials investigated the mode of transmission.

Previously, international health officials had noted one case of possible person-to-person sexual transmission. But the Pan American Health Organization said more evidence was needed to confirm sexual contact as a means of Zika transmission.

The WHO has said the virus, linked to severe birth defects in Brazil, has been spreading rapidly in the Americas and could infect 4 million people. It said it had launched a global response unit to fight the mosquito-borne virus, which is spreading rapidly in Latin America. Africa and Asia are also seen as being vulnerable.

The virus has been linked to microcephaly, in which babies have abnormally small heads and improperly developed brains.

“Most important, we need to set up surveillance sites in low- and middle-income countries so that we can detect any change in the reporting patterns of microcephaly at an early stage,” Dr. Anthony Costello said in Geneva. Costello is WHO’s director for maternal, child and adolescent health.

Twenty to 30 sites could be established worldwide, mainly in poor countries without robust healthcare systems.

Brazil, the country hardest hit by Zika, has reported 3,700 suspected cases of microcephaly that may be linked to Zika.

In an address to a joint session of Brazil’s Congress, President Dilma Rousseff said her government will spare no resources in mobilizing to combat the mosquito that transmits the virus. With no vaccine or treatment for Zika, efforts to curb its spread have focused on eradicating mosquito breeding sites.

“There will be no lack of funding,” Rousseff said.

Brazil, which has 3,700 suspected cases of microcephaly that may be linked to Zika, is scheduled to host the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro in August.

Rousseff also said Brazil and the United States will enter a partnership to develop a Zika vaccine as soon as possible to stem the spread of the virus.

The Pan American Health Organization said Zika was now spreading in 26 countries and territories in the Americas.

The virus was first identified in 1947 in rhesus monkeys in Uganda while scientists were studying yellow fever, according to the WHO. It was identified in humans in 1952. Zika is spread by mosquitoes of the Aedes genus.

Sanofi on Tuesday announced that it has lauched a project to develop a vaccine against the virus, the most decisive commitment yet by a major vaccine maker. The company said its Sanofi Pasteur vaccines division would use its expertise in developing vaccines for similar viruses such as yellow fever, Japanese encephalitis and dengue.

The WHO called for urgent development of better tests to detect the virus in pregnant women and newborn babies.

“The reason it’s a global concern,” Costello said of Zika, “is that we are worried that this could also spread back to other areas of the world where the population may not be immune.”

Costello said the Aedes mosquitoes that carry the Zika virus “are present … through Africa, parts of southern Europe and many parts of Asia, particularly South Asia.” Africa and Asia have the world’s highest birth rates.

‘GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT’

WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said on Monday it was “strongly suspected but not yet scientifically proven” that Zika causes microcephaly.

“We believe the association is ‘guilty until proven innocent,'” Costello said, referring to whether Zika causes microcephaly.

A new method to render male mosquitoes infertile by nuclear radiation could help reduce populations of the insect carrying the virus, the Vienna-based U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency U.N. atomic agency said.

Small biotech companies and academic institutions also have plans to develop a Zika vaccine, and GlaxoSmithKline PLC has said it is concluding feasibility studies to see if its vaccine technology was suitable. And on Tuesday other companies joined the effort.

The University of South Australia said it was working on a Zika vaccine with Australian biotech Sementis Ltd.

U.S. drug developer NewLink Genetics Corp said it has started a project to develop Zika treatment options.

Experts have said a Zika vaccine for widespread use is months if not years away.

A Zika case has been identified on mainland Chile for the first time in a man who had traveled to Colombia, where the virus is circulating, local media reported.

An Australian state health service said two Australians were diagnosed with the virus after returning from the Caribbean, confirming the first cases of the virus in the country this year.

(Additional reporting by Dominique Vidalon in Paris, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Shadia Nasralla in Vienna, Ben Hirschler in London, Anthony Boadle in Brasilia, Jane Wardell in Sydney, Amy Sawitta Lefevre in Bangkok, Pedro Fonseca in Rio, Rosalba O’Brien in Santiago, Ankur Banerjee and Amrutha Penumudi in Bengaluru; Writing by Will Dunham; Editing by Toni Reinhold and Jonathan Oatis)

Zika virus linked to birth defects is international emergency, WHO says

GENEVA/LONDON (Reuters) – The World Health Organization has declared the mosquito-borne Zika virus to be an international public health emergency due to its link to thousands of suspected cases of birth defects in Brazil.

WHO Director-General Margaret Chan told reporters on Monday coordinated international action was needed to improve detection and speed work on a vaccine and better diagnostics for the disease, although curbs on travel or trade were not necessary.

The emergency designation was recommended by a committee of independent experts to the U.N. agency following criticism of a hesitant response so far. The move should help fast-track international action and research priorities.

“Members of the committee agreed that the situation meets the conditions for a public health emergency of international concern. I have accepted this advice,” Chan told a news briefing at WHO headquarters.

The WHO said last week the Zika virus was “spreading explosively” and could infect as many as 4 million people in the Americas. Brazil is due to host the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro in August.

The WHO was lambasted for reacting too slowly to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa which killed more than 10,000 people in the past two years, and has promised to do better in future global health crises.

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention head Thomas Frieden said the declaration “calls the world to action” on Zika, while Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust medical charity, said the WHO “should be congratulated for being far more proactive this time”.

Derek Gatherer, a lecturer at Lancaster University, said the WHO’s move was “like a declaration of war … on Zika virus”.

UNDERDEVELOPED BRAINS

Brazil has reported some 3,700 suspected cases of microcephaly, in which infants are born with smaller-than-usual brains. The Health Ministry has linked the condition to Zika, although the connection is not yet definitive.

Chan said the causal link was “strongly suspected but not yet scientifically proven”.

Brazilian Health Minister Marcelo Castro told Reuters on Monday the epidemic was worse than believed because in 80 percent of cases the infected people had no symptoms.

As the virus spreads from Brazil, other countries in the Americas are also likely to see cases of babies with Zika-linked birth defects, experts believe.

The Pan American Health Organization says that Zika has now spread in 24 nations and territories in the Americas. In addition, the Zika virus infection was also reported late last year in Cape Verde.

The Zika virus has raised questions worldwide about whether pregnant women should avoid infected countries.

Chan said delaying travel was something pregnant women “can consider”, adding that if they needed to travel they should take protective measures by covering up and using mosquito repellent.

The clinical symptoms of Zika are usually mild and often similar to dengue, a fever which is transmitted by the same mosquito, leading to fears that Zika will spread into all parts of the world where dengue is commonplace.

More than a third of the world’s population lives in areas at risk of dengue infection, in a band stretching through Africa, India, Southeast Asia and Latin America.

Zika’s rapid spread in Latin America is put down to the prevalence of Aedes aegypti and a lack of immunity among the population.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said one way for the United States to reduce the risk of Zika there would be to try to control the mosquitoes that carry it.

“At some point here … we’re going to see the temperatures rise (and) that will make for a more hospitable environment for mosquitoes,” he said. “We want to make sure that we have got a strategy to try to limit the spread of this disease when that happens.”

Georgetown University public health and law expert Lawrence Gostin, who last week called on the WHO to act urgently against Zika, welcomed Chan’s declaration but called for a proper strategy, adding: “Actions speak louder than words.”

“Without a clear strategy and ample resources, sounding an alert is simply not enough,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Kate Kelland in London, Roberta Rampton in Washington and Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago.; Editing by Alison Williams)

Race for Zika vaccine gathers momentum as virus spreads

(Reuters) – Companies and scientists are racing to create a Zika vaccine as concern grows over the mosquito-borne virus that has been linked to severe birth defects and is spreading quickly through the Americas.

Zika is now present in 23 countries and territories in the Americas. Brazil, the hardest-hit country, has reported around 3,700 cases of the devastating birth defect called microcephaly that are strongly suspected to be related to Zika.

The Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO), stung by criticism that it reacted too slowly to West Africa’s Ebola epidemic, is convening an emergency meeting on Monday to help determine its response to the spread of the virus.

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.

On Thursday, the WHO forecast that as many as 4 million people in the Americas may become infected by Zika, lending new urgency to research efforts already under way. Vaccine developers made clear that a vaccine for widespread public use is at least months, if not years, away.

The closest prospect may be from a consortium including drugmaker Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc that could have a vaccine ready for emergency use before year-end, according to one of its lead developers. Inovio’s share price jumped as much as 13 percent on Friday.

Canadian scientist Gary Kobinger told Reuters on Thursday the first stage of testing on humans could begin as early as August. 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.

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.

“Right now, we are in the pre-clinical stage, as I suspect everyone is,” Chief Executive Dr. Elliot Parks told Reuters.

Another private vaccine developer, Boston-based Replikins Ltd, said it was preparing to start animal studies on a Zika vaccine in the next 10 days. Data from the trials on mice and rabbits would likely be out in the next couple of months, Replikins Chairman Samuel Bogoch told Reuters.

“No one has the $500 million on hand to take it (a vaccine) all the way to human trials. Somewhere along the course we hope to have big pockets join us,” Bogoch said.

‘FIGHT THE MOSQUITO’

Zika had been viewed as a relatively mild illness until Brazilian health officials identified it as a matter of concern for pregnant women. While a direct causal relationship has not been established, scientists strongly suspect a link between Zika and thousands of children born in Brazil with abnormally small heads, brain defects and impaired vision.

There is no treatment for Zika infection. About 80 percent of those infected experience no symptoms, making it difficult for pregnant women to know whether they have been infected.

Efforts to combat Zika are focused on protecting people from being bitten and on eradicating mosquitoes, a tough task in many parts of Latin America, where people live in poverty and there are plentiful breeding grounds for the insect.

“We do not have a vaccine for Zika yet. The only thing we can do is fight the mosquito,” Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said on Friday, reiterating her call for a national eradication effort.

Rousseff said tests for the development of a vaccine would begin next week at the Butantan Institute, one of Brazil’s leading biomedical research centers in Sao Paulo.

Zika has hit Brazil just as it prepares to host the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro on Aug. 5-21, an event that draws hundreds of thousands of athletes, team officials and spectators. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) assured teams on Friday the Olympics would be safe from Zika, but urged visitors to carefully protect themselves.

U.S. lawmakers have begun to press the Obama administration for details of its response to Zika. At least 31 people in the country have been infected, all of them after travel to affected countries.

“We need to ensure that federal agencies are working closely together and with the international community to stop its rapid spread,” said Republican Ron Johnson, chairman of the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

The United States has two potential vaccine candidates and may begin human clinical trials by the end of 2016, U.S. officials said, but there will not be a widely available vaccine for several years.

(Reporting by Natalie Grover and Amrutha Penumudi in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago, Karolos Grohmann in Berlin, Anthony Boadle in Brasilia, Jeffrey Dastin in New York; Writing by Frances Kerry; Editing by Will Dunham)