US safety drive: Zika test must for donated blood
Miami, Aug. 27: Donated blood should be tested for the Zika virus, which can cause birth defects, US regulators warned amid a mounting outbreak of the mosquito- borne disease in the United States.
The move announced on Saturday revises a previous Food and Drug Administration guideline issued in February that recommended active screening of donated blood only in “areas with active Zika virus transmission.” Since there is “still much uncertainty regarding the nature and extent of Zika virus transmission,” the recommendation for testing all donated blood “will help ensure that safe blood is available” for everyone, said Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Centre for Biologics Evaluation and Research.
Stricter national safeguards are needed as evidence has emerged that Zika can be transmitted sexually, and that those infected often show no symptoms, the FDA said.
More than 2,500 people in the United States have been diagnosed with Zika, along with more than 9,000 in the US territories such as Puerto Rico, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
Most of those cases were brought in by people infected while traveling abroad.
There are 584 pregnant women on the US mainland with lab evidence of Zika infection, and 812 in the US territories. Florida in July announced its first cases of locally transmitted Zika, with 42 infections.
Donated blood is already being tested in Florida and Puerto Rico, and at least one unit of blood in Florida was found to contain the Zika virus and was intercepted, Marks said.
Meanwhile, President Barack Obama has called on Republicans, who control both chambers of the US Congress, to allocate more money to fight the spread of Zika.
Zika is primarily spread by the bite of an Aedes aegypti mosquito, but it can also be transmitted sexually. On Friday, US authorities announced the first known case of a man who had Zika but did not know because he showed no symptoms — and then subsequently infected his female partner during unprotected sex. — AFP