The SunCoast Blood Bank is asking for extra blood donations this weekend to help shore up the state's blood supply after the Food and Drug Administration's decision Friday to require all USA blood banks to test donated blood for the Zika virus.

Because the Zika virus has forced the deferral of hundreds of thousands of donors across the nation, Prijatel said, blood centers have asked people who have never given blood before to consider making a donation.

The revised guidance marks a major expansion from a February 16 advisory that limited such screening to areas with active Zika virus transmission.

Blood centers already test for other bloodborne viruses, such as HIV and hepatitis.

So far, 43 cases of locally transmitted Zika have been identified in the US, all in Florida. He said the organization screens for 15 diseases and infections to ensure donations are safe, and recently added Zika to their screening.

Most of those cases were brought in by people who were infected while traveling overseas.

"The mosquitoes that can carry Zika virus are located in the region in and around New Orleans which were not impacted by the floods". Over the next two weeks, the Red Cross said it will expand this testing to four additional states in the south central and southwestern United States.

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These states are in close proximity to places where Zika is actively spreading or where there's been a significant number of cases contracted through travel or sexual contact.

"We've come to a critical juncture: the risk to the blood supply combined with the uncertainty about the nature and extent of Zika virus transmission", Marks said.

Zika's confusing, because it can hang out in a man's semen for months. But since there had been no confirmations of the Zika-carrying Aedes aegypti mosquito in or around the Baton Rouge area, experts actually feared an outbreak of West Nile virus, not Zika, according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune. In July, Florida's Miami-Dade County reported its own first case of a local mosquito-transmitted Zika infection. These include Alabama, Arizona, California, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, New York, South Carolina and Texas. But infection during pregnancy can lead to severe brain-related birth defects.

"Testing labs and the test vendors are working feverishly to allow testing to start on time in the areas subject to the 12 week timeline", said Dr. Louis Katz, in an email.

The French case involved a couple who had both traveled to Martinique, where Zika was active, and was discovered through a routine blood test a few months after their return.

If no screening test is available, blood collection agencies can purify blood platelets or plasma using one of the FDA's approved methods.

All SunCoast Blood Bank donor centers will be open this weekend on Saturday from 7 a.m.to 1 p.m. and Sunday from 9 a.m.to 2 p.m.