FDA To Allow Blood Centers To Screen Blood Using Experimental Zika Test.

, “The move means that Puerto Rico, which had halted local blood donations...will soon be able to resume collecting donations from residents. And it should help blood banks elsewhere in the country avoid similar ordeals.” Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said the FDA will work “with blood centers in Puerto Rico to try to help as many as possible make use of the investigational test.” The new blood test “makes it much less likely that officials will have to declare blood donation moratoriums in states like Florida, Texas and Louisiana this summer, as they were forced to do in Puerto Rico.” Meanwhile, Dr. Simone Glynn, the chief of the branch of blood epidemiology and clinical therapeutics at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute stressed that without a screening test for the Zika virus, “you don’t know whether blood transfusions with infection might be occurring.” http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/31/health/zika-virus-blood-test-puerto-rico.html?_r=0