In the late 1940s, two groups of investigators that were
searching primarily for the natural source of the yellow
fever virus independently isolated an unrecorded virus in
the Zika forest near Lake Victoria in Uganda, an East
African country. The first isolation, by G. W. A. Dick,
was made from the serum of a sentinel febrile rhesus
monkey in April 1947. The second isolation, by S. F.
Kitchen, was obtained from a batch of Aedes africanus
mosquitoes in January 1948. Viruses from these two
isolations were shown to be identical by the reciprocal
neutralization test and it was named the Zika virus
(ZIKV) (766 strain) after the forest where it was isolated
(Dick et al., 1952). In a subsequent test at the same location,
ZIKV neutralizing antibodies were detected in the
sera of 6 of 99 humans and 1 of 15 wild monkeys (Dick,
1952).