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LOS ANGELES (AP) – Health officials warned Wednesday that the Los Angeles area is seeing an increase in dengue cases among people with no history of travel outside the continental United States, one year after the first dengue case was reported in California. .
At least three people appear to have contracted dengue fever from mosquito bites this month in the Baldwin Park neighborhood east of downtown Los Angeles, public health officials said.
“This is an unprecedented cluster of locally transmitted dengue in an area that has not previously had mosquito transmission of dengue,” Los Angeles County Department of Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said in a statement.
Other cases caused by bites from mosquitoes originating in the United States have been reported this year in Florida, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, leading authorities to declare dengue epidemics. There have been 3,085 such cases in the United States this year, 96% of which occurred in Puerto Rico, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
As climate change brings warmer weather and mosquitoes’ ranges expand, dengue cases are rapidly increasing worldwide.
Dengue fever is commonly spread through the bite of infected Aedes mosquitoes in tropical regions. Aedes mosquitoes are common in Los Angeles County, but community transmission had not been confirmed until cases were reported in Pasadena and Long Beach last year.
All previous cases in California were linked to travelers to areas where dengue fever is common, such as Central and South America, said Ayman Halai, head of the department’s vector-borne viral disease unit. It is said that he was
So far this year, Los Angeles County has reported 82 similar cases among people returning from travel, Halai said. There have been 148 cases in California overall.
Dengue fever can cause high fever, rash, headache, nausea, vomiting, muscle pain, and bone and joint pain. Approximately one in four infected people will develop symptoms, usually within five to seven days after being bitten by a dengue-carrying mosquito. One in 20 people with symptoms develops severe dengue fever, which causes severe bleeding and can be life-threatening.
Public health officials will conduct home visits within 150 meters (492 feet) of the bite person’s home. Ferrer said this is the typical flight distance for mosquitoes that carry the virus.
Ferrer recommended that people use insect repellents and eliminate standing water around their homes where mosquitoes can breed.
Officials are testing mosquitoes for the disease, but so far no dengue-infected mosquitoes have been found in the San Gabriel Valley.
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