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 Health Minister Marcelo Castro told Reuters that Brazil will start
mandatory reporting of cases by local governments next week when
most states will have labs equipped to test for Zika, the
mosquito-borne virus that has quickly spread through Latin America.
The virus has no vaccine or cure at present.
On Monday, the World Health Organization declared the Zika outbreak
to be a global emergency, a decision that should help fast-track
international action and research priorities.
In Brazil, believed to be the country hit hardest by Zika, the
outbreak has sparked fear especially among pregnant women after
local experts linked the virus to thousands of cases of microcephaly,
or abnormally small heads and underdeveloped brains, in newborns.
"Eighty percent of the people infected by Zika do not develop
significant symptoms. A large number of people have the virus with
no symptoms, so the situation is more serious that we can imagine,"
Castro said in an interview.
"Our big hope is finding a vaccine," he added.
The Zika emergency comes at a particularly bad time for President
Dilma Rousseff's unpopular government, adding a new burden to a
public health system hit by budget cuts in the midst of a severe
recession. It has also cast a shadow on Brazil's hosting of the
Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro in August.
The Rousseff government said there was no chance the Games will be
called due to the health scare.
"We have to explain to those coming to Brazil, the athletes, that
there is zero risk if you are not a pregnant woman," Rousseff's
chief of staff Jaques Wagner told reporters.
The Brazilian government suspects the virus was brought to Brazil
during the 2014 soccer World Cup by a visitor from Africa or Oceania
where Zika is endemic. An estimated 1.5 million Brazilians have
caught Zika, a virus first detected in Africa in the 1947 and
unknown in the Americas until it appeared in May in the
poverty-stricken northeastern region of Brazil.
The Pan-American health Organization said the virus has since spread
to 24 countries and territories in the hemisphere.
WORKING WITH U.S. ON VACCINE
Castro, a psychiatrist from Rio, said the virus cannot be
transmitted from person to person, only by mosquito, addressing
fears that it could be spread through saliva, semen or urine.
By next week, labs in all but three of Brazil's states will be able
to test whether a person has had Zika or not, he said.
And by next month, the labs will have a test that can detect all
three viruses borne by the Aedes aegypti mosquito - dengue,
chikungunya and Zika. The test, however, will only be effective
during the initial infection period of five days.
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Castro said Brazilian researchers are convinced that Zika is the
cause of the 3,700 confirmed and suspected cases in Brazil of
microcephaly in newborns. Ninety percent of children born with the
condition will have retarded mental and physical development,
experts say.
"The microcephaly cases are increasing by the week and we do not
have an estimate of how many there will be. The situation is serious
and worrying," Castro said.
Brazilian biomedical research centers are joining forces with U.S.
counterparts to try to find a Zika vaccine in record time, Castro
said. A partnership between the U.S. National Institutes of Health
and Brazil's Butantan Institute will seek to develop a vaccine by
adding a gene to an existing one for dengue, he said.
Until there is a breakthrough on a vaccine, Brazil's only option is
to try to eradicate the mosquito that spreads the virus, Castro
said, with the government mobilizing all its possible resources and
people, including tens of thousands of soldiers, to go door-to-door
seeking places where the insect breeds.
Rousseff signed a temporary decree on Monday that makes it
obligatory for residents to allow health workers to inspect their
homes and properties for still water deposits where the Aedes
aegypti mosquito lays its eggs.
Asked if Brazil would ease its restrictions on abortion to allow
women with Zika to terminate pregnancies, Castro said it would be up
to Congress to make that change. The government, he said, is
sticking with the current law that makes abortion in the world's
largest Roman Catholic country illegal except in cases of rape and
risk to the mother's life.
Brazil will follow the U.S. decision last week to prohibit blood
donations from people who have been infected with Zika, Castro said.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, however, has said it is
planning to require people who have traveled to an affected country
to defer giving blood, but details on how that might work are still
being determined.
(Reporting by Anthony Boadle and Lisandra Paraguassu; Editing by
Mary Milliken, Bernard Orr)
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