Yes, I'd be glad to, Dr. Taylor.
First, thank you for having me in from Winnipeg. It is certainly a busy time at the National Microbiology Lab right now, because we're offering first and foremost all the diagnostic testing services for Zika virus within the country.
We're offering two different types of tests. One is a molecular test. It's a rapid test. As Canadians return from endemic areas or areas where Zika is transmitting, if they've recently come back and they're recently symptomatic, we have a test that very quickly and definitively confirms if they do have the virus. It's detecting if they still have the virus circulating within their blood or within other tissues. It's an easy test.
The other test we have is called serology, and that's a test to see if someone has been exposed to the virus in the past. It's testing someone's own immune system to see if they have produced antibodies to the virus. Unfortunately, that test is not as rapid as the molecular suites, because we're trying to detect a past infection. It could take weeks to confirm a case.
Right now, we're lucky to have both of those within our menu of testing. It's coming through collaboration with our colleagues in the States at the CDC, through having had this 2013 isolate that came through a traveller who went to Thailand.
As you expect for the NML, one of the reasons we're there is that cases of infectious disease occur in Canada and there's not a chance to diagnose them locally within a hospital or provincial public health lab, as was the case with this return traveller from Thailand who had returned with symptoms of dengue. It wasn't dengue. It was something else, so they called on the NML. The specimens came to us in 2013, and we confirmed that this was the first travel-associated case of Zika. As Dr. Taylor said, it gave us that leg-up to start doing the work and to start offering and developing some of those diagnostics.
Right now, we're offering the diagnostic testing for all the provincial public health labs. In the background we've started to do research. Some is applied research on developing new tests. Some is evaluating commercial assays. If we can get those put into place, then we can disseminate the testing capacity into provincial labs so it's not all coming into Winnipeg.
We're also beginning other research studies, such as small animal models, because if one wanted to test antivirals or candidate vaccines, you'd want to start in small animals. Other models...such as in mosquitoes. We have an entomology lab where we can start doing testing to see if the mosquitoes that are in Canada can carry this virus. We have math modellers, tele-epidemiologists, and mathematical geographers who can model if the mosquitoes that are present in Brazil and Central America have a possibility of coming to Canada and also bringing the disease to Canada.
Again, we have a variety of research means to interrogate the likelihood, which is low, of this coming to Canada and sustaining in Canada. We have research on the go to develop these animal models, which will lead to possible therapeutics, whether an antiviral or a vaccine.
That's some of the work at the NML right now.