Can the Zika virus come to Canada? A Brock University professor researching the mosquito-borne virus thinks so.
One of Canada’s top entomologists, Fiona Hunter, said the virus has the potential to reach the 49th parallel and go further north via a certain type of invasive species of mosquito within a few years.
The Asian tiger mosquito has spread from Southeast Asia to other areas around the world—including Africa and the United States—in the last 30 years.
Prior studies have found the species capable of carrying the Zika virus. Hunter said she thinks it’s only a matter of time before the bug extends its reach into Canada, as it has already migrated from the southern U.S. to as far north as Pennsylvania.
“Since we have invasive species now, there is a very real possibility that some of our mosquitoes will become infected,” she said, “but we do not know if they will be able to infect by bite.”
As concern over a global health crisis grows, medical experts have told Canadians they are at low-risk of contracting the disease: The species of mosquito spreading the virus, Aedes aegypti, doesn’t exist in Canada. It is unknown whether local species of mosquitoes can transmit the virus.
So far, people from more than 36 countries, including Canada, have contracted the virus. In most Zika cases, there are no symptoms beyond small rashes, joint pain, and mild fevers. It can be treated by rest.
However, pregnant women have been asked to take extra precautions as Zika is suspected to have caused thousands of cases of microcephaly in newborns in Brazil. The disorder results in babies being born with small and underdeveloped heads.
The Zika outbreak has been declared a global health emergency by the World Health Organization, which has estimated three to four million cases will be diagnosed in the Americas in the next year.
Hunter, who has researched extensively on biting insects and on the West Nile virus, works in one of two of Canada’s containment laboratories equipped with an insectary. The other one is part of the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg.
Since mid-February, Hunter and her research team have attempted to grow the virus in the lab to determine whether it can be transmitted between male and female mosquitoes or passed on to their eggs. They also plan to test species of Ontario mosquitoes in the spring and summer.
“We do not have the same mosquito species composition now that we had 30 years ago,” Hunter said. “We now have invasive species that shouldn’t be here at all.”
Hunter said disbelief in Zika-carrying mosquitoes migrating north is generally based on what we think of as the historic-cultural “Canadian north.”
With urgency, other Canadian schools such as the University of Alberta have also begun to investigate the possible spread of the virus into Canada. The school is attempting to modify glucometers to test for Zika.
