The law of unintended consequences is strong with this kind of risky test.

This is the same firm of Oxford University scientists started in 2002, which released GM mosquitoes in Brazil back in 2012, to fight dengue fever and malaria. Like 2 years later, Brazil had the highly publicized Zika virus outbreak. Some people suspected they were related, but scientifically, it seemed unlikely. I'm pretty sure they eventually went ahead and released more(different?) mosquitoes, this time targeting Zika. There had been a small town health official suggest the earlier one was effective, but we hadn't heard much of either's results.

Tackling pest populations with modified viruses is a pretty old idea. Australia did it several times in the late 1980's against various invasive rodents. {1} {2} I seem to recall that at least one of these Australian trials (maybe not linked), aimed to sterilize rodents, but accidentally caused an immune deficiency. It makes you wonder if someone, somewhere, had tried this even earlier, just before the AIDS outbreak, even though it seems a bit of stretch.