Zika spread in cities likely: expert

BRASÍLIA
The Zika virus, linked to a surge in infants born with abnormally small heads, is likely to spread this year to Brazil’s densely populated cities where it has barely surfaced, a top health official told AFP.

Zika has struck hard in hot and humid southeastern and central Brazil, but largely spared bigger cities like Sao Paulo or Rio de Janeiro, said Dr Claudio Maierovitch, head of the communicable diseases surveillance department at the Ministry of Health.

Since October, 462 cases of microcephaly have been confirmed in Brazil, which has a population of 204 million, and more than 3,800 cases are being studied as possibly being related to the virus, according to government figures.

While scientists are racing to develop a vaccine for Zika — not likely to be ready for at least three years — and with just six months to go before the opening of the Summer Olympics in Rio, the focus on fighting the virus has turned to exterminating its carrier, the Aedes aegypti mosquito.

Here is a summary of the interview.

What is currently the most unsettling scenario?

This is the great fear of the immediate future — that densely populated states will experience an intense outbreak of the virus that cannot be controlled.

These states include Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Parana, Minas Gerais and Goias that have experienced vast dengue epidemics in the last years. This leads us to believe that the mosquitos will be present in a very generalized way, and that they could transmit other viruses.

Q: What is the plan until a vaccine is available? A: The situation today is dramatic.

Brazilians are extremely worried. The most important measure taken by the government has been ... to focus on fighting the mosquito.

It is also possible that, after a first year in which the Brazilian population has not been exposed to the Zika virus, part of population may become immunized and after some time we can have large immune population, which would result in the virus circulating less.