Days Before the Rio Olympics, Bizarre New Twist In the Zika Crisis

After the 1940s, when Zika flared up in Brazil last year, not much was known about the virus. But one thing was clear - like dengue, it spreads only through mosquito bites.

In a couple of months, scientists were bewildered learning that Zika also spreads through the sexual route and can cause microcephaly in pregnant women, babies with under-developed, exceptionally small heads, and short-term paralysis in adults.

But a new piece in the Zika puzzle has completely befuddled scientists - a person in Utah, United States got infected, and no one really knows how! Meaning, this person did not travel to a Zika-endemic area, so there’s no question of a mosquito bite nor is there any history of sexual contact with a prior patient.

It’s unusual. A very unique situation that we haven’t previously seen. There’s a lot we don’t know about Zika virus and we are still doing a lot of investigations to determine whether Zika can be spread from person to person.

Dr. Satish Pillai, Head, Utah-Zika Division, Centres for Disease Control and Prevention

So did Zika spread through air in this case? In the wake of the Rio Olympics, this is a potentially ominous development.

What Really Happened In Utah, United States

A 72-year-old, patient X of Utah, with an underlying disease, got infected with the Zika virus in June and died later in the month. Person Y who cared for him never traveled to any Zika-hit area, there is no evidence of Zika-carrying Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in the state, nor is there a sexual history with an infected person by which he could be mysteriously Zika-positive.

Another strange thing to be noted is that patient X’s blood samples had an abnormally high amount of virus load, roughly 1,00,000 times higher than seen in other patients. 

The newly infected person has fully recovered, but scientists are now testing other people in contact with the elderly patient to learn more about how it was spread. But according to science that shouldn’t have any role in the caregiver, patient Y, getting infected. Either ways, the circumstances of the infection raise thorny questions about new ways of virus transmission.

Also Read: The Zika Scare: Myths vs the Facts

Medical Scramble After the Alarming Twist Just Days Before the Rio Olympics

The whole episode is very unusual.

The opening ceremony of the Rio Olympics is a few days away and just hours back the Yale University gave the Games its blessing saying the Zika risk to athletes is “negligible”. But this finding is a huge twist and turns everything scientists learnt about the virus in the last six months, upside down.

It’s true that never before has Zika emerged as a life threatening disease. It’s been around since the 1940s but never before on such a massive scale. So it is possible that the side-effects are understated. That the panic isn’t just over-hype. Either ways, scientists are busy grasping with developments in Utah and much more research will be needed to answer these uncomfortable questions:

1. The caregiver who got infected, person Y, is a healthy individual with no underlying disease, did Zika transfer through air to infect him?

2. Is Zika the new Ebola? Was there a needle stick involved in transmission? An injury? Or did it pass from person-to-person through close contact, sneezing, sharing utensils, since the index patient X, had unusually high load of the virus in his body?

3. It’s deadlier than thought - does Zika also cause dengue-like internal bleeding in organs?

Before the death of patient X, the elderly person experienced internal bleeding in the mouth and nose. Earlier in July, a couple of patients in Puerto Rico, who were misdiagnosed with dengue and then found Zika positive, also died from internal bleeding in the organs.

Medical sleuths are busy decoding the puzzle patient-by-patient but with this development no one is certain about the modes of transmission of this deadly disease.

Also Read: Eugenie Bouchard Concerned About Zika Scare; May Pull Out of Rio