S. Korea has little chance of Zika virus spread: expert

SEOUL, Feb. 5 (Yonhap) -- South Korea is now faced with little chance that the Zika virus may spread in the country, but no one knows what will happen down the line, the most prestigious local expert on the disease said Friday. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the Zika virus an international health hazard earlier in the week following an outbreak in Brazil. South Korea designated it a legal infectious disease late last month. "At the moment, there is an extremely low chance of the virus spreading in South Korea, but the mosquito-borne virus can spread under the right conditions," Yoon In-kyu, director of the Dengue Vaccine Initiative at the International Vaccine Institute (IVI) in Seoul, said in a interview with Yonhap News Agency. Seoul said earlier that with no mosquitoes to help spread the virus, the risk of an outbreak in the winter is nonexistent. But it cautioned that the situation could change when mosquitoes become active in summer, vowing to beef up monitoring at airports and keep tabs on people coming from Zika outbreak regions. The Zika virus is almost always non-fatal, causing only mild symptoms like fever, joint and muscle pain, headaches and bloodshot eyes. On the other hand, the virus can cause microcephaly, a debilitating condition that causes a baby to be born with an abnormally small head and brain. Yoon, who studied the Zika virus when he worked in Thailand and the Philippines, pointed out that if a mosquito bites an infected person and then goes on to bite another, the disease can be transmitted. Scientists have said the virus can survive in the blood stream for some time and can even be transmitted through sexual intercourse. The virologist said South Korea needs to be on guard to prevent conditions from becoming favorable over the course of several years. "An unexpected outbreak of dengue fever in the middle of Tokyo in 2014 is a classic case of a virus becoming active over time," he said. The fever was the first known outbreak in 70 years and forced Japanese authorities to put Yoyogi Park off limits until health workers killed off insect colonies with pesticide. Yoon said that the Zika virus has some 70 percent genetic commonality with dengue and are both transmitted by mosquitoes. "While diseases like Zika, Chikungunya and dengue, were usually limited to certain regions in the past, they have started spreading in recent years," he said. The scientist, who works for an organization dedicated to developing drugs that counter disease in developing countries, said that while it is similar to dengue, the medical community just does not have enough data to make headway on a vaccine. There is currently a working vaccine for dengue fever. He predicted it will take some time to come up with a vaccine that can tackle the Zika virus. yonngong@yna.co.kr (END)