Brazil has reported an estimated 1 million+ Zika virus infections to date and are investigating in excess of 3,500 microcephaly cases possibly linked to the mosquito borne virus and now the health ministry wants to get to work on a vaccine, and quickly.
On Friday, The Minister of Health, Marcelo Castro, visited the Butantan Institute in Sao Paulo, the country’s main producer of biopharmaceuticals, where he discussed international partnerships for the development of a vaccine against the Zika virus in an attempt to get the outbreak and possible complications under control.
Two other public laboratories, Evandro Chagas Institute, located in Para, and the Institute of Technology in Immunobiology (Bio-Manguinhos), in Rio de Janeiro, both linked to the Ministry of Health, are also looking to partner with scientific institutions to future production of a vaccine against the disease in this country.
Castro sees the vaccine as very promising and hopes to use it soon.
“The vaccine is the great solution,” said the minister Marcelo Castro. “We are in contact with international laboratories, with our laboratories in Brazil, so we can develop, in record time, a vaccine against Zika, which will be much simpler to develop than dengue, which has four serotypes. In the case of Zika, is only one”, he noted.
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- NIH dengue vaccine enters phase 3 trial in Brazil
- Brazil, with more than 1.5 million dengue cases, approves Dengvaxia
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