Public health officials are currently investigating the possibility of a new way the Zika virus could be transmitted.
Currently, there are only two known transmission methods for Zika: bites from Aedes aegypti or Aedes albopictus mosquitoes or sexual activity. However, a person in Utah recently contracted Zika after caring for an elderly person with the virus.
Officials said extremely close contact may have passed the virus from one person to another.
“This case is unusual. The individual does not have any of the known risk factors we’ve seen thus far with Zika virus,” Gary Edwards, a Salt Lake County health officer said during a news conference.
Edwards said the patient hadn’t been to a Zika-affected area, nor had intimate contact with the older infected person. However, the person had “helped provide care for the deceased patient.”
Noting privacy guidelines, public health officials have declined to give additional details.
Uncertainty as to How the Virus Jumped
The main mosquitoes recognized for transferring Zika are not seen in Utah, Edwards pointed out. As a preventative measure, officials are capturing and evaluating mosquitoes all over both persons’ homes to rule out that manner of transmission.
“At this time we don’t know if the contact between the new case and the deceased patient played any role in the transmission of the disease,” Edwards said. “There is uncertainty about how this new case contracted Zika. But we do not believe that there is risk of Zika transmission among the general population in Utah based on what we know so far.”
On Monday, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials said the older man had traveled to a Zika-affected region and lab tests revealed he had distinctly high quantities of virus in his blood – greater than 100,000 times the levels seen in specimens of other infected people.
Public health researchers in Utah are meeting with the caregiver who was infected and their family to find out more on the kinds of interaction the patients had before the first patient passed. Officials also are collecting specimens for testing, and collaborating with facilities where that patient was to ascertain what kind of contact he had with the staff.
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