Brock tackles Zika virus

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Just as Ontario confirms its first case of Zika virus after someone came back from a trip to South America, a team of scientists at Brock University has started testing mosquitoes native to Canada to see whether the pesky insects can become infected with the Zika virus. The university received containers of the virus from Health Canada and over the next couple of weeks researchers will see if infected mosquitoes could potentially transmit the virus to humans.

Carefully sealed containers carrying four vials of a Zika strain originally from Thailand were shipped to Brock’s campus. The team will infect two colonies of mosquitoes including Aedes aegypti, which has been linked to transmitting the Zika virus to humans in South and Central America. At last count, 9 Canadians who travelled to those areas have returned home infected with the virus.

The team is testing whether the virus can be transmitted between male and female mosquitoes during mating and if a female mosquito can pass the virus on to its eggs.

Most people who contract the infection show no symptoms. The virus has been linked to more than 4 000 cases of babies born with unusually small heads. People infected with Zika don’t infect one another directly, however there have been cases in the US where the virus had been sexually transmitted.

There are 67 different species of mosquitoes in Ontario but the team will concentrate on about a dozen of them including of those in South America.