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Zika Virus: A New Threat and a New Kind of Pandemic

Top federal researchers warn we need to prepare for multiple overlapping epidemics of emerging viruses such as Zika, which may be causing birth defects.

By Maryn Mckenna

PUBLISHED January 13, 2016

An Aedes aegypti mosquito, the chief vector of Zika virus.

The leader of infectious disease research in the U.S. government says that the pandemic of Zika virus spreading across the global south, which may be causing an epidemic of birth defects in South America, heralds a new kind of infectious disease threat. It is exploding at the same time and in the same areas as other diseases carried by the same vector, mosquitoes—and thus demonstrates that it is no longer enough to be prepared to counter one disease at a time.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, writes in a study released Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine writes in a study released Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine with Dr. David Morens of NIAID that Zika arrives in the Americas on the heels of three other mosquito-borne diseases: West Nile virus, in the United States since 1999 and still causing cases; chikungunya, which has invaded the Caribbean and Central America; and dengue, which moved north from the tropics to become re-established...

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Zika Virus: A New Threat and a New Kind of Pandemic

Top federal researchers warn we need to prepare for multiple overlapping epidemics of emerging viruses such as Zika, which may be causing birth defects.

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