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After cases of mosquito-borne Zika virus infection were first announced in Florida last summer, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) required that certain blood donation centers implement screening for the virus. Health officials were concerned that patients might catch the virus through blood transfusions, as there had been reports from Brazil of such incidents.
At first, the agency only required blood donation centers in areas with active mosquito-borne Zika transmissions to test samples for signs of the virus. In August 2016, the FDA extended that guidance to include the rest of the U.S.; by December, all US blood centers had implemented Zika testing. Given how recently Zika had spread through the Americas, this meant a rapid deployment of relatively new testing processes that are ...
