Several Florida counties recently declared a state of local emergency in response to a spate of dengue fever infections.
Hillsborough county, Florida, officials made the declaration on ۲۴ September as health authorities recorded ۱۳۴ confirmed cases of dengue fever, which is a mosquito-borne sickness typically found in countries outside the US. Officials said that the spread of the illness poses “an immediate and widespread threat to the public health, safety, and welfare of the residents and visitors of Hillsborough county”.
Controlling the tropical disease – often referred to as breakbone fever because it can cause extreme pain – requires “immediate, aggressive, and continuous” measures such as pesticide application, public education and emergency resource planning, officials said.
Dengue cases have become more common in parts of the US. In ۲۰۲۳, Long Beach and Pasadena reported the first ever known locally acquired cases in California.
The spread of dengue mosquitoes outside tropical and subtropical locales has even hit England, with authorities recently announcing that Aedes aegypti had been found in east London homes.
Scientists have said that global warming is poised to intensify climate-related diseases.
Declaring a local state of emergency enables Hillsborough county – whose seat is the city of Tampa – to request “any available and necessary state, federal, and local emergency funds, grants, financial assistance, and mutual aid” in their ongoing fight against mosquitoes carrying dengue. The initial declaration was put into effect for one week, but officials can extend it.
Neighboring Pasco and Pinellas counties have also declared similar states of emergency in relation to dengue reports.
The Florida department of health said in its recent report on mosquito-transmitted viruses that there were ۲۶ cases of international travel-linked dengue reported in the state during a six-day period beginning on ۱۳ September. There have been a total of ۲۱۲ known travel-related cases in Florida reported so far in ۲۰۲۶.
Over the same period, there were ۳۸ locally contracted dengue cases reported in Florida. They were among ۱۹۰ cases of locally acquired dengue across Florida, the state’s health department said.
Numbers from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) differ slightly. As of Monday, the CDC noted ۳۹۲ cases of dengue had been reported overall in Florida for the year so far, along with different county-level data.
Dengue is contracted through the bite of some mosquito species, largely Aedes aegypti, as well as Aedes albopictus. Both species are present in Florida.
Symptoms show up between three days and two weeks after a bite from an infected mosquito. Among the symptoms are “sudden onset of fever, severe headache, eye pain, muscle and joint pain … and bleeding. Gastrointestinal symptoms like vomiting and diarrhea may also be present in some cases,” Florida’s state health department said.
The symptoms typically span four days to one week. A rarer form of the illness called dengue hemorrhagic fever can be fatal without the administration of proper supportive care, the state health department said.
Hillsborough county authorities have expressed optimism that dengue infections might slow down in the coming weeks, with zero “mosquito test pools” testing positive recently, according to the local Bay News ۹ outlet.
