A Florida-based blood center will start screening donations in Georgia and Alabama for the Zika virus.
LifeSouth, a non-profit with locations in McDonough, Dunwoody and Gainseville, Georgia, started scanning blood donations in their home state in July as part of a Food and Drug Administration mandate in Miami-Dade and Broward counties.
The organization is expanding the screening northward because required testing seemed imminent for neighboring Alabama and Georgia.
“We’re trying to be ahead of the game,” said Toni Holmes, district community development coordinator with LifeSouth.
The move comes amid heightened worry about the spread of Zika, which has been linked to devastating birth defects.
Recently, health officials announced that 14 South Florida residents had contracted Zika from mosquito bites, the first cases of local transmission in the mainland U.S.
Previously, Zika has been contracted by people who traveled to Zika-affected regions - mainly Latin America and the Caribbean - or through sexual contact with those who had been there. The mosquito-borne outbreak in a one-mile square neighborhood just north of downtown Miami has prompted federal health officials to advise women who are pregnant to avoid the area.
Georgia is home to the two types of mosquitoes that are known to carry Zika. The state has reported 41 Zika infections, all of them travel related, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Zika virus can cause birth defects, including microcephaly, a condition where infants are born with abnormally small heads and brain damage. It has also been strongly associated with Guillain-Barré syndrome, in which a person's own immune system damages the nerve cells. There is no vaccine to prevent or treat Zika.
LifeSouth officials said the new screening requirements will be seamless for donors, requiring simply that they sign an extra consent form.
Holmes also said it doesn’t impede the time it takes for blood to go from donation center to hospitals and other recipients as scanning for Zika doesn’t require an additional test.
Once blood leaves donation centers in Alabama, Georgia or Florida it heads to the same testing center in St. Petersburg, Florida. There the blood will undergo the same tests it always has, only now they’re looking for Zika too.
If a sample comes back positive for Zika, the donor would be informed, much as they would be for other infectious diseases, like HIV.
The testing is done internally through private vendor, Creative Testing Solutions.
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