Brazil confirms blood-transfusion Zika; PAHO calls for global support
Lisa Schnirring
CIDRAP News
Feb 04, 2016
Brazilian health officials today confirmed the first known cases of Zika infection from blood transfusions, a day after the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) put out a call for more international help in battling the outbreak.
In other developments, Dallas officials issued a follow-up on a recent sexual transmission case, groups announced new research pushes, and Florida declared a public health emergency to better help some of its counties prepare.
Transfusions occurred before outbreak
Brazilian officials reported two transfusion-linked Zika cases, Reuters reported today. The first was in a man who received blood from a transfusion in March 2015. Marcelo Addas Carvalho, director of the Blood Center at the Sao Paulo state University of Campinas, said genetic testing confirmed that the man became infected with Zika virus but did not develop symptoms.
The second transfusion-linked case involves a man who received several transfusions for gunshot wounds last April, according to the health department in Campinas, a city about 60 miles northwest of Sao Paulo. The timing of both men’s transfusions was before Brazil’s outbreak began in May.
Brazil’s health ministry said the second man died of his wounds, not from his Zika infection, adding that it was unlikely that he contracted the virus from a mosquito because he was in an intensive care unit for 3 months.
“The two cases can be considered transmission of the virus through blood transfusion, with greater certainty in the first because we did genetic sequencing comparing the virus in the donor and to the virus in the recipient,” Carvalho told Reuters.
The health ministry said it has reminded blood donation centers that those infected with Zika or dengue shouldn’t give blood for 30 days after recovery from an active infection.
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