Fight mosquitoes with the same mosquitoes. The idea is not new, but the approach of Verily Life Science, an alphabetically controlled company, or Google, which deals with health, has released 20 million mosquitoes in Fresno, Calif. Objective: Fighting and defeating Aedes Aegypti, the species
carrying the Zika virus, transmits fever dengue and chikungunya, and who arrived in that area of California in 2013.
He has built an automatic mosquito breeding system with frightening productivity: one million specimens a week. Mosquitoes are then infected with Wolbachia, a natural insect bacterium (harmless to humans) that makes sterile females. Thanks to an automatic and very efficient sorting system, of which little is known yet, male mosquitoes - which do not sting man - are collected to be released; The females - who are bitten by a man - are killed instead.
UNDERGROUND. The 20 million male mosquitoes released in nature when they meet companions to reproduce, transmit the Wolbachia bacterium that causes sterility and is avoided so that new mosquitoes are born that can transmit the Zika virus.
This is the first time this strategy is adopted so massively in the United States; By the end of 2017, a similar test will be conducted in Australia.
The effectiveness and speed of the automatic mosquito production and selection system are ideal for combating the spread of mosquito-transmitted viruses. Linus Upson, one of the project leaders, explained: "If we really want to help people globally, we must be able to produce many mosquitoes, distribute them where they serve and measure their population at a very low cost."
The modified mosquitoes released by Verily are governed by US Environmental Protection (EPA) and fall under the "microbial control of parasites". An environmental risk assessment conducted by EPA in 2016 concluded that altered mosquitoes are not harmful to other organisms.
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