750 million genetically engineered mosquitoes approved for release in Florida Keys

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45. Brazil has been releasing sterile male mosquitoes for years

Mosquito sterilization offers new opportunity to control chikungunya, dengue, and Zika
14 November 2019 News release

A technique that sterilizes male mosquitoes using radiation will soon be tested as part of global health efforts to control diseases such as chikungunya, dengue, and Zika.

The Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) is a form of insect birth control. The process involves rearing large quantities of sterilized male mosquitoes in dedicated facilities, and then releasing them to mate with females in the wild. As they do not produce any offspring, the insect population declines over time.

The Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and WHO have developed a guidance document for countries that have expressed interest in testing the Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) for Aedes mosquitoes.

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The Sterile Insect Technique was first developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and has been used successfully to target insect pests that attack crops and livestock, such as the Mediterranean fruit fly and the New World screwworm fly. It is currently in use globally in the agriculture sector on six continents.

The guidance on using the technique to control diseases in humans recommends adopting a phased approach that allows time to test the efficacy of the sterilized insects. Epidemiological indicators monitor the impact of the method on disease-transmission. It also provides recommendations on mass production of the sterile mosquitoes, government and community engagement, measuring the impact of the technique, and assessing cost-effectiveness.

More: https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/14-11-2019-mosquito-sterilization-offers-new-opportunity-to-control-chikungunya-dengue-and-zika

This article talks about sterilization through radiation, but four years ago Brazil was using GMO mosquitoes:

Brazil will release billions of lab-grown mosquitoes to combat infectious disease. Will it work?

By Kelly ServickOct. 13, 2016 , 9:00 AM

BRAZIL—Every Saturday morning, Maria do Carmo Tunussi goes door to door asking her neighbors to scour their houses and yards for flowerpots, buckets, clogged gutters—anything that could collect water and offer mosquitoes a place to breed. For 17 years, Tunussi has been a community health agent at the local clinic in CECAP/Eldorado, a district of about 5000 people in the small city of Piracicaba, 2 hours northwest of São Paulo, Brazil. She has seen many surges of the mosquito-borne dengue virus, which causes fever, nausea, and agonizing joint pain. The task sometimes feels futile. "You remove the breeding site one day, and the next day, it's back," she says. "It never ends."

Last April, CECAP became the first neighborhood in Piracicaba to try something new—a mosquito control tool that Tunussi believes not only stamped out dengue, but kept the Zika virus from taking hold. That tool is OX513A—a strain of transgenic Aedes aegypti mosquitoes designed to reduce the population by passing a lethal gene to their offspring.

In Florida, a planned release by Oxitec, the company behind the insects, is mired in public resistance. But here in Piracicaba, few residents seem to bat an eye at the little clouds of mosquitoes spilling out the window of the Oxitec van on its slow morning route.

That may be because dengue is so common here. The virus sickened about a million and a half people in Brazil last year, and more than 1600 in Piracicaba between July 2015 and July 2016. Panic over the spread of the Zika virus has only amplified interest in solutions beyond pesticides, which aren't all that effective against A. aegypti, and breeding site removal, which, despite Tunussi's efforts, is hard to keep up year after year. So it's not surprising that, 7 years after releasing the world's first genetically modified (GM) mosquito, Oxitec has chosen Brazil as the site of a major scale-up. It is moving from small-scale pilot projects like the one in CE CAP to planned releases covering tens of thousands of people.

More: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/10/brazil-will-release-billions-lab-grown-mosquitoes-combat-infectious-disease-will-it#

Published online 2015 Jul 2
Suppression of a Field Population of Aedes aegypti in Brazil by Sustained Release of Transgenic Male Mosquitoes

Abstract

The increasing burden of dengue, and the relative failure of traditional vector control programs highlight the need to develop new control methods. SIT using self-limiting genetic technology is one such promising method. A self-limiting strain of Aedes aegypti, OX513A, has already reached the stage of field evaluation. Sustained releases of OX513A Ae. aegypti males led to 80% suppression of a target wild Ae. aegypti population in the Cayman Islands in 2010. Here we describe sustained series of field releases of OX513A Ae. aegypti males in a suburb of Juazeiro, Bahia, Brazil. This study spanned over a year and reduced the local Ae. aegypti population by 95% (95% CI: 92.2%-97.5%) based on adult trap data and 81% (95% CI: 74.9-85.2%) based on ovitrap indices compared to the adjacent no-release control area. The mating competitiveness of the released males (0.031; 95% CI: 0.025-0.036) was similar to that estimated in the Cayman trials (0.059; 95% CI: 0.011 – 0.210), indicating that environmental and target-strain differences had little impact on the mating success of the OX513A males. We conclude that sustained release of OX513A males may be an effective and widely useful method for suppression of the key dengue vector Ae. aegypti. The observed level of suppression would likely be sufficient to prevent dengue epidemics in the locality tested and other areas with similar or lower transmission.

Full paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4489809/