From Zika News
April 7, 2020
An experimental program to almost eliminate disease-causing mosquitoes succeeded in nearly eliminating them from test sites in California’s Central Valley.
The effort appears to be paying off, according to a paper published in the journal Nature Biotechnology.
According to news reports on April 6, 2020, stamping out illness caused by mosquitoes is one of Google/Alphabet unit Verily’s most ambitious public-health projects, the Debug Project.
The insects are bred in Verily labs to be infected with a common bacterium called Wolbachia.
When these male mosquitoes mate with females in the wild, the offspring never hatch.
Verily’s study revealed that throughout the peak of the 2018 mosquito season, from July to October, Wolbachia-infected males successfully suppressed more than 93 percent of the female mosquito population at field test sites.