The US Food and Drug Administration recommended yesterday that all blood donated in the United States and its territories be tested for the Zika virus, as it moves to prevent transmission of the virus through the blood supply.
The agency said its decision to expand blood screening in the US was based on concerns about more cases of local transmission in Florida, the growing number of travel-related infections and concerns that Zika-tainted blood could unwittingly be given to a pregnant woman, putting her unborn baby at risk of severe birth defects.
"The transfusion of a pregnant woman with blood infected with the Zika virus could have terrible consequences," Peter Marks, director of the FDA's Centre for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said.
The current Zika outbreak was first detected in Brazil last year and has since spread across the Americas.
In Brazil, Zika has been linked to more than 1,800 cases of microcephaly, and US officials expect as many as 270 cases in Puerto Rico, where local transmission of the virus is widespread.
"Over 8,000 travel-associated and over 2,000 non-travel associated cases of Zika have been reported in the United States and US territories," Dr Marks said.
Given the frequency of travel of individuals within the US, he said there was a risk that people without symptoms of Zika could donate blood and transmit the virus.
Testing of donated blood is under way in Florida, Puerto Rico, as well as in other areas of the US, and has been proven helpful in finding infected donations.
"About 1% of donations in Puerto Rico have tested positive for Zika virus," Dr Marks said.
Such testing also helped spot one unit of Zika-tainted blood in the past few weeks. Dr Marks said testing discovered the infected blood before it reached any patients.
Meanwhile, Singapore reported the first locally transmitted case of the Zika virus today, with three other suspect infections pending confirmation.
Authorities identified the confirmed patient as a 47-year-old Malaysian woman residing in the city-state.
"As she had not travelled to Zika-affected areas recently, she was likely to have been infected in Singapore," the Ministry of Health and the National Environment Agency said in a joint statement today.
Elsewhere, Nicaragua confirmed its first case of a baby born with microcephaly linked to the Zika virus, authorities said yesterday.
"The girl was born very underweight, at less than four pounds (1.81 kg) and with confirmed microcephaly," said government spokeswoman Rosario Murillo.
