Puerto Rico Is Fighting Zika With Cloud Technology

There are more than 30 species of mosquitoes in Puerto Rico. Most are considered nuisances, not health threats. But one, the Aedes aegypti, spreads chikungunya, dengue, Zika, and other viral diseases. Zika, after having been first reported in Puerto Rico in 2015, infected more than 35,000 people across the island the following year. When Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico in September 2017, scientists worried the A. aegypti population could soar because of breeding sites created by storm debris and residents storing buckets of water to flush toilets during blackouts.

To assess the threat, researchers are counting how many females—the sex that bites—are caught in more than 1,300 traps across the island. The initiative, which is being undertaken by the Puerto Rico Vector Control Unit, is also studying insecticide resistance, applying larvicides to breeding sites, and educating residents. The PRVCU stores all data on remote Microsoft Azure servers and relies on the cloud to share information quickly between research teams in the field and the laboratory.