Gail Alexan­der

In­sect Vec­tor Con­trol Di­vi­sion au­thor­i­ties han­dling the Zi­ka threat are to­day spray­ing ar­eas of St George West, in­clud­ing a res­i­den­tial area in Diego Mar­tin, where T&T's first of­fi­cial Zi­ka case was dis­cov­ered, Health Min­istry of­fi­cials con­firmed yes­ter­day.

On Wednes­day, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, while on a spray­ing tour in South, an­nounced T&T had record­ed its first of­fi­cial Zi­ka case af­ter lab­o­ra­to­ry tests.

He said the coun­try's first case was a woman, age 61, who had re­turned re­cent­ly from a vis­it to New Zealand, where there were no re­port­ed cas­es of Zi­ka.

She pre­sent­ed symp­toms of the virus on Feb­ru­ary 10 and test­ing was done Feb­ru­ary 12.

Deyals­ingh said the case was con­firmed by the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency and in­ves­ti­ga­tions would be­gin to de­ter­mine how the woman con­tract­ed the virus. He added she was at her home re­cov­er­ing but did not state where she lived.

But se­nior health and mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tion of­fi­cials yes­ter­day con­firmed the first Zi­ka case was record­ed in St George West, in a par­tic­u­lar­ly thick­ly pop­u­lat­ed west­ern res­i­den­tial com­mu­ni­ty of Diego Mar­tin.

The T&T Guardian ob­tained the name of the com­mu­ni­ty but of­fi­cials said due to pa­tient con­fi­den­tial­i­ty they pre­ferred that the name of the area not be pub­li­cised.

They said that had ini­tial­ly been done with the Chikun­gun­ya episode and on­ly when that virus be­came wide­spread were the ar­eas in which it was oc­cur­ring de­tailed.

In­sec­tor Vec­tor of­fi­cials ini­tial­ly vis­it­ed the par­tic­u­lar Diego Mar­tin com­mu­ni­ty yes­ter­day to be­gin spray­ing but many res­i­dents were not at home.

As such, they sent out email no­ti­fi­ca­tion through the Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (DM­RC) and will re­turn to the com­mu­ni­ty to­day to start the ex­er­cise.

The email, how­ev­er, ad­vised res­i­dents who had young chil­dren, were preg­nant or had a se­ri­ous ill­ness to va­cate the area dur­ing the spray­ing.

It al­so ad­vised the res­i­dents to cov­er birds and food items and to turn off air con­di­tion­ing units if they planned to stay in­side, since that could trap the fog in­side rooms and be harm­ful.

The T&T Guardian learned that res­i­dents of that area were al­so try­ing to get the DM­RC to clean drains and have al­so alert­ed all res­i­dents to flush out gut­ter­ings, plant pots and oth­er pos­si­ble mos­qui­to breed­ing spots.

A sched­ule of spray­ing is al­so ex­pect­ed to be an­nounced for oth­er St George West ar­eas over the com­ing days.

Deyals­ingh didn't an­swer calls last night but is ex­pect­ed to give an up­date on the Zi­ka is­sue to­day.

Af­ter spread­ing to 21 coun­tries, in­clud­ing Caribbean states–neigh­bour­ing Venezuela, Guyana, Bar­ba­dos and Suri­name–Ja­maica record­ed its first Zi­ka case over two weeks ago.

Zi­ka, the lat­est mu­ta­tion of the in­fluen­za virus, is borne by the aedes ae­gyp­ti mos­qui­to. It is re­port­ed to have milder symp­toms than the chikun­gun­ya virus.

How­ev­er, in Brazil where 1.5 mil­lion cas­es have been re­port­ed, there have been claims the virus is linked to mi­cro­cephaly, new­born ba­bies with ab­nor­mal­ly small heads and brains.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions are al­so un­der­way on claims of links with the Guil­lain-Barre Syn­drome, an au­to im­mune con­di­tion in­volv­ing nerve cells, caus­ing mus­cle weak­ness and some­times paral­y­sis and death.

At a UWI health sym­po­sium on Zi­ka and H1N1 re­cent­ly, UWI mol­e­c­u­lar ge­net­ics/vi­rol­o­gy pro­fes­sor Dr Chris­tine Car­ring­ton said Zi­ka may al­ready be in T&T un­de­tect­ed, since it had mild symp­toms and peo­ple might not go to hos­pi­tals for that.

She said, how­ev­er, that causative ba­sis with mi­cro­cephaly and Guil­lain-Barre Syn­drome have yet to be firm­ly es­tab­lished. How­ev­er, Car­ring­ton agreed preg­nant women should be cau­tious. Say­ing mos­qui­to erad­i­ca­tion was nec­es­sary, she said Zi­ka was not a threat to a healthy per­son who is not preg­nant.

Deyals­ingh at the sym­po­sium dis­tanced him­self from the pos­si­bil­i­ty of abor­tions for a preg­nant woman who may get the Zi­ka virus.

If such a woman want­ed an abor­tion, they would have to con­sid­er that T&T's law on­ly al­lowed abor­tion if the moth­er's life was in dan­ger, he added.

Al­so at the sym­po­sium, Deyals­ingh said busi­ness­peo­ple had sug­gest­ed us­ing ge­net­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied mos­qui­toes to de­stroy the aedes ae­gyp­ti but he said the risks of in­tro­duc­ing such a species was un­known and it would re­quire 2.8 mil­lion such mos­qui­toes to de­stroy 20,000 fe­male aedes ae­gyp­ti.

Two days ago, the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion con­firmed it's look­ing at "nov­el ap­proach­es" to con­trol mos­qui­toes known to spread the in­fec­tion, in­clud­ing re­search in­to ge­net­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied (GM) in­sects.

While Brazil has ex­pressed in­ter­est in that op­tion, Do­mini­ca re­cent­ly ve­toed it. An In­di­an com­pa­ny al­so said it has two Zi­ka vac­cine can­di­dates ready for pre-clin­i­cal tri­als.