Millions of genetically modified mosquitoes will be deployed in the Cayman Islands in the fight against Zika and other diseases.
The modified males, which don't bite, will mate with females and produce offspring that will not survive to adulthood, which should dramatically reduce the population of the non-native, disease-spreading Aedes aegypti species in the territory.
It's a major for development for British biotech company Oxitec, which has promoted the method heavily as an environmentally safe way to combat the vectors of mosquito-borne illnesses while confronting public concerns about the technology.
The company has deployed its mosquitoes to fight Zika in Brazil following initial trials and previously conducted tests in the Cayman Islands and Panama.
Oxitec and officials in the Florida Keys have proposed testing and are awaiting US regulatory approval.
The Cayman government approved the full deployment after what they called a successful, peer-reviewed trial in 2010, Bill Petrie, the director of the British territory's Mosquito Research and Control Unit, said in a statement.
"We have wanted to remove this invasive pest for a long time but this has proven very difficult using currently available tools on an island the size of Grand Cayman, so we have been looking for new approaches," Petrie said.
Oxitec will begin releasing hundreds of thousands of modified mosquitoes per week on the island of Grand Cayman, home to about 50,000 people, starting in June and continue for at least nine months, said Glen Slade, the company's head of business development.
The mosquitoes will not be used on the two smaller islands of the British territory, Little Cayman and Cayman Brac, which do not have the Aedes aegypti.
The company insists it's not possible for the mosquitoes to fly to other islands or to survive long in the environment if they were to be inadvertently transferred elsewhere. They predict a massive drop in the number of the targeted species on Grand Cayman.
"It's not unreasonable to think we might achieve elimination," Slade said.
In Key West, Florida, public meetings about Oxitec's proposed trial there became so contentious that mosquito control officials requested law enforcement protection at an April meeting to discuss the issue.
In February, the World Health Organisation said it is encouraging countries to conduct further trials of genetically modified mosquitoes to help tackle emerging illnesses such as Zika. The virus has been linked to the birth defect microcephaly and to a temporary paralysis condition known as Guillain-Barre.
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