we've got to do it." >> lapook: dr. fauci and his he showed us how a vaccine they'd already created for west nile virus was re-configured for zika. >> fauci: this is what's called a d.n.a. platform. and a d.n.a. platform is made up of a plasmid, which is merely a circular piece of d.n.a., and what it has in it, is an area where you can actually insert the gene of whatever virus you want to make a vaccine against. and now you have a zika vaccine, merely by replacing this little segment. >> lapook: kind of like a prefabricated scaffolding, right? >> fauci: the foundation stays the same. you put in the part. if the part is west nile, you stick the west nile in. you want to do zika? you take the west nile out. you put zika in. >> lapook: the d.n.a. in vaccines like this can be quickly mass produced. this new approach means future vaccines could take months, not years, to reach clinical trials. >> catherine paquette: good morning. >> lapook: last august, we watched with dr. fauci as volunteer catherine paquette received the very f

people infected there started traveling, triggering, dr. fauci says, a global pandemic. >> fauci: all of a sudden, the yap islands, french polynesia, easter island, brazil, south america, central america, puerto rico, gulf coast. i mean, that is such an example of how, when you have a transmissible agent and people and that's exactly how the infection got to florida. the mosquito didn't fly from rio de janeiro to florida. the mosquito flies 500 feet in a lifetime. it's the people who travel. >> lapook: travelers with zika have the virus in their bloodstream for about a week. when they arrive in a place without zika, a local, uninfected mosquito can bite them, become infected, and then go on to bite other people, spreading the virus. that's what happened in puerto rico, where in just over six months, zika engulfed the island, and infected thousands of pregnant women. in september, we were at the university hospital in san juan when one of them, rocio hernandez, went into labor. el corazon. >> rocio hernandez: si. >> lapook: boom, boom-- that's the

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dr. anthony fauci, head of infectious diseases at the national institutes of health, says the delay is an example of what worries him most about zika. >> anthony fauci: people don't take it seriously. >> lapook: how do you not take it seriously, when you see the babies with microcephaly? >> fauci: but people don't-- people don't. >> lapook: how do you explain that? >> fauci: they tend to say, "well, i'm-- i'm not seeing anything. so it must not be happening."