The hunt for a vaccine to prevent the Zika virus could take years, a top US health chief said on Thursday amid a worrying outbreak of the mosquito-borne illness blamed for birth defects.
The hunt for a vaccine to prevent the Zika virus could take years, a top US health chief said on Thursday amid a worrying outbreak of the mosquito-borne illness blamed for birth defects. There is no vaccine or treatment for Zika, which the WHO said is “spreading explosively” through the Americas and may lead to as many as four million cases in the region.
Zika has been linked to a rise in cases of microcephaly — abnormally small heads and brains — in babies born to infected women in Brazil.
Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the US government is working on two appro-aches toward a vaccine against Zika, based on research already done on related mosquito-borne viruses.
Children born with abnormally small heads and brain defects linked to the outbreak of Zika virus in Brazil are also suffering serious damage to their eyesight and possibly their hearing, doctors said on Thursday.
Meanwhile, the French health ministry said on Friday that five people who were infected with the Zika virus while travelling abroad have returned to France since the beginning of 2015. None of the patients presented a severe form of the infection,” the ministry said in a statement.
