On Monday, World Health Organization Director-General Margaret Chan berated the world for dropping the ball, citing failures in family planning and mosquito control as the main reasons for the ongoing Zika virus outbreak.
At today’s panel discussion in Washington D.C., Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also focused on pregnancies and mosquito control, saying the Zika virus remains “pretty concerning” for experts as they learn how it affects pregnant women, reports ABC News.
“The reality is one bite, and if you’re pregnant, your baby might be harmed,” Schuchat said at the panel today. “That’s a phenomenal problem.”
And that one bite says it all. This is because most people who get the Zika virus are asymptomatic, showing no outward sign they are sick. Only one in five people may show signs of an infection, including a fever, rash, joint pain and conjunctivitis, according to the CDC.
Of special concern for pregnant women is the possibility of having a baby born with microcephaly, a birth defect that is characterized by a malformed or smaller head and brain, and can result in serious developmental delays.
To date, there have been no locally acquired cases of Zika in the continental United States. The U.S. territory of Puerto Rico currently has 1,108 locally transmitted cases, including one baby born with microcephaly and one Zika-related death, according to Digital Journal.
Dr. Schuchat said that about 500 people in the U.S. were found to have likely been infected with the Zika virus, and based on 80 percent of people not showing any symptoms if they do have the virus, she estimated that thousands have entered the U.S. already, potentially able to start an outbreak.
As it is with the yellow fever virus, if someone has the Zika virus, even if they aren’t ill, and the right kind of mosquito bites them, the mosquito can then bite a reservoir species. This is when the cycle starts. Other mosquitoes biting the reservoir animal can then become vectors, spreading the virus to people.
A reservoir or host species often does not get the disease, or if they do it is non-clinical. They just carry it and are considered to be non-lethal. This completed life cycle is seen in the bubonic plague where the flea infects humans but the reservoir animal is the rodent.
There have been numerous Aedes mosquitoes identified as being vectors of the Zika virus, including A. africanus, A. apicoargenteus, A. furcifer, A. hensilli, A. luteocephalus and A. vittatus. It has been found through extensive studies that the most cited carrier of Zika is Aedes aegypti. This mosquito is expanding its territory because of global trade and travel and a warming climate.The A. aegypti mosquito is now found on every continent, with perhaps the exception of Antarctica.
In the United States, there is much concern over the lack of appropriate mosquito control on a local basis. We have just gotten lax about the problem. “We’re not starting in a good place. We used to have a lot stronger mosquito control and mosquito surveillance,” said Schuchat. “We really have a patchwork nation around mosquito capacity. The local governments are really concerned.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, says the A. aegypti mosquito is really difficult to eradicate. He also says that a mosquito-borne disease is a lot different than an outbreak that is spread person-to-person. “It’s a whole new venue of transmission.
According to The Hill, the House and Senate will probably still be arguing over funding needed to combat the Zika virus well into the summer, and as is usual, it will probably be too late to do anything effective. So far, Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) have said little about any plans to move forward.
The thing is, summer is almost here and mosquitoes will be hatching and almost 300 pregnant women have already been diagnosed with the Zika virus. Health organizations are getting worried, and rightly so because Congress has discussed a deadline of the July 4 recess for action, which will be far too late. So now, if anything bad happens, we can blame our own elected officials.
