At least 2.6 billion people, over a third of the global population, live in parts of Africa, Asia and the Pacific where Zika could gain a new foothold, researchers warned Friday, with 1.2 billion at risk in India alone.
These are people who reside in as-yet unaffected parts of the world with the right climate and abundant mosquitoes for the virus to settle, spread and propagate an epidemic like the one besetting the Americas and Caribbean, they said.
Sporadic cases of Zika have previously been reported in Africa and Asia, but nobody knows whether they were widespread enough for populations to acquire resistance to the virus.
Another mystery is whether immunity to the African Zika strain would offer protection against the Asian strain currently in circulation.
