Combating the Aedes aegypti mosquito, agent of the Zika virus
Oropouche is present in several animals and must be able to be transmitted through sexual activity. The Pan American Health Organization issued an alert at a time when the virus has already affected 10,000 people in a single year.
It was first identified in 1955 and was named after the Trinidad village where it was found. Pronounced “o-ro-push“, says , who explains that the virus is not known to the population, but has been receiving the attention of experts in recent months.
This is because, for example, in Brazil, between 2015 and 2022, 261 cases of Oropouche were registered. Already in 2024, there were more than 10 thousand cases which essentially affected South America and the Caribbean, which has already earned these countries an epidemiological report issued by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO).
Oropouche is present in birds, monkeys, rodents and sloths, as well as dengue-like mosquitoes.Like this virus or Zika, Oropouche is an arbovirus (that is, transmitted by insect bites).
Symptoms of Oropouche infection are equally typical of many other viruses and usually last for a week: fever, rash, muscle pain, headache. But, warns NPR, some cases can be more serious, causing encephalitis and meningitis — inflammation of the brain and surrounding membrane, which can cause it to swell.
Now one published in the magazine Emerging Infectious Disease in October, states that sexual contact can be a way of transmitting the virus.
On August 2, 2024, a man who had been in Cuba from July 19 to 29 was diagnosed with Oropouche at a hospital in Italy. In analyzes carried out on his semen, scientists discovered that the virus was present 16 days after the onset of symptoms — and 6 days after they had completely disappeared. They also realized that the virus was capable of replicating and propagating.
“This could open a new route of transmission”, he warned Tulio de Oliveira from Stellenbosch University to NPR. Furthermore, as with Zika, the mother can transmit the virus to the fetus during pregnancy.
Furthermore, Davidson Hamerinfectious diseases doctor and professor of Global Health and Medicine at the Boston University School of Public Health says that “the virus has rearranged and is very different from what was previously circulating”, so “thePeople who had immunity in previous episodes — 5, 10 years ago — can be infected again.”
