Health officials said they were investigating whether the debilitating mosquito-borne virus chikungunya was circulating in New York after a woman tested positive on Long Island in a preliminary screening.
Although the virus has exacted a steep toll across parts of South America, Africa and Asia during the past 20 years, the United States has seen scant local transmission. The last time the disease was known to have been transmitted locally in the United States was about a decade ago, when fewer than 15 cases were detected in Florida and Texas.
But a 60-year-old woman in the Town of Hempstead, a hamlet in central Nassau County that is about 20 miles east of Manhattan, said she had tested positive for the virus in a preliminary screening test this month. Her blood samples have been sent to the state Health Department’s public health laboratory in Albany to confirm a diagnosis, a Nassau County official said.
“The New York State Department of Health is investigating a possible locally acquired case of chikungunya virus,” a department spokeswoman, Danielle De Souza, said in a statement. “No locally acquired cases have ever been reported in New York State, and the risk to the public remains very low.”
In an interview, the woman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a sensitive health matter, said she had not traveled anywhere recently and had been shocked when she saw the test results. She said she wanted to share her experience out of concern that the virus was circulating undetected and that others might be falling ill, too. She worried that doctors were not even considering chikungunya as a possible diagnosis.
She said that she fell ill a month ago, on Aug. 21, and was stricken with severe joint pain, the classic symptom of chikungunya. Pain racked her feet, ankles, knees, wrists, hands and shoulders, especially her right shoulder. It felt like it was on fire, almost as though it were being pulled apart, she said.
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