The Board of Agriculture voted unanimously Tuesday to allow University of Hawaii scientists to import the Zika virus to Hawaii for vaccine trials, paving the way for local researchers to join the growing clamor among companies and scientists worldwide to develop methods to control the virus, which is linked to devastating birth defects in newborns.

University of Hawaii researchers have been trying to secure a permit to import the Zika virus since 2009, but officials with the Department of Agriculture were slow to act on the request until this week after staff submitted a recommendation to the board that the permit be approved.

The Agriculture Department is responsible for ensuring that any imports, whether plants, animals or a virus, are safe and don’t pose a risk to the local environment or population.

“We as a program and department are very happy that the Board of Agriculture agreed with us and voted unanimously,” said Vivek Nerurkar, chairman of the Department of Tropical Medicine, Medical Microbiology and Pharmacology at the UH John A. Burns School of Medicine. “I think this is going to really get our research going faster now. We have been doing research on Zika at different levels, but with importation of the virus we can actually start working on the vaccine.”

UH scientists still need to acquire funding for the vaccine research, which is expected to be carried out on mice and possibly guinea pigs. Nerurkar said that his team has applied for a number of grants from the National Institutes of Health and other agencies and should hear back about their funding requests in about three months.

As the Zika virus continues to spread throughout the Americas, health officials have warned that it could soon take hold in Gulf Coast states as mosquito season gets underway, as well as Hawaii, adding new urgency to efforts to find a vaccine.

There have been a handful of confirmed cases of Zika in Hawaii; however, all of them were acquired outside of the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Local health officials worry that mosquitoes could acquire the virus by biting an infected person, touching off a Zika outbreak in Hawaii akin to the recent dengue fever outbreak on Hawaii island.

Zika is primarily spread through mosquitoes but can also be contracted through sexual contact.

The Zika virus has been around for decades. Many people don’t exhibit symptoms of the virus and don’t know they have been infected, while others develop a fever, rash, joint pain or conjunctivitis, according to the CDC.

However, alarm began spreading among health officials last year after an ongoing outbreak in Brazil appeared to be linked to a spike in cases of microcephaly, a severe neurological disorder in which babies are born with heads that are too small. The CDC confirmed in April that the virus does indeed cause microcephaly, as well as other severe fetal brain defects.

Nerurkar said that it’s not clear whether it’s only the strains emerging from Brazil that cause microcephaly. That’s one aspect of the virus that his team plans to study in their attempts to create a vaccine or other methods of prevention.