Evidence suggests that climate change is expanding the territory of the mosquito that transmits the Zika virus, as well as two other tropical viruses now spreading north: dengue and chikungunya. Prolonged warm temperatures also create the conditions for a longer biting season and accelerated viral replication in the mosquitoes.
Speaking to Harvard Health in a February 3, 2016 article, Aaron Bernstein of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health noted that there isn’t enough evidence yet to definitively connect climate change to the emergence of Zika and other mosquito-borne viruses.
But he added, “If I wanted to limit the spread of mosquito-borne diseases like Zika, I’d choose a future more like the past, instead of the one that climate science tells us is coming.”
Read Harvard Health article: What the rise of Zika (and other viruses) might tell us about our planet