New York health authorities confirmed Tuesday that a person who fell sick on Long Island had been infected with the debilitating mosquito-borne virus chikungunya and appeared to have caught the virus locally — the first time such a case had been identified in the state.
The announcement came after the state’s public health laboratory in Albany, the Wadsworth Center, conducted confirmatory testing, a process that took more than two weeks.
“We urge everyone to take simple precautions to protect themselves and their families from mosquito bites,” Dr. James McDonald, the state health commissioner, said in a statement.
In late September, The New York Times reported that a 60-year-old woman in Hempstead, a hamlet about 20 miles east of Manhattan, had tested positive for the virus in a preliminary screening test. The woman said in an interview with The Times in September that she had not recently traveled outside Long Island. Tuesday night’s announcement from state health officials appears to be referring to her.
Chikungunya is known for causing severe joint pain, which can clear up quickly or linger for months or even years, leaving some people unable to work or resume their old lives. Symptoms also include fevers, rash and muscle pain.
Chikungunya cases have surged worldwide this year, with China facing its largest outbreak since the first cases in that country were detected in 2008.
The disease was first identified in Tanzania in the early 1950s, but established itself in the Western Hemisphere only in 2013. Since then, it has torn through the Caribbean and Central and South America, becoming endemic across much of the region.
But the United States has largely been spared. Though a few thousand U.S. residents have been infected with chikungunya through travel, there have been only 13 instances of people catching the virus in the United States in the past decade and a half, all in Florida and Texas.
Until the Long Island patient tested positive, few suspected that the virus was circulating in New York.
“An investigation suggests that the individual likely contracted the virus following a bite from an infected mosquito,” the state health department said. “While the case is classified as locally acquired based on current information, the precise source of exposure is not known.”
Experts speculated that the mosquito that infected the woman might have hitched a ride on a plane or ended up in the luggage of a returning passenger. The statement from the Health Department noted another possibility. A mosquito might have bitten a New Yorker who had been infected abroad, leading the mosquito to become infected and potentially transmit the virus onward when it bites another person, according to the news release.
The health authorities are aware of at least a half-dozen people in New York who tested positive for chikungunya this year after traveling abroad to countries where the virus is circulating.
Two types of mosquitoes are known to effectively transmit chikungunya. One of them, the Aedes aegypti, or yellow fever mosquito, is not naturally found in New York. But the other type, Aedes albopictus, commonly called the Asian tiger mosquito, has extended its range to parts of New York after landing in the United States about 40 years ago.
Dr. McDonald characterized the current risk of infection as “very low,” but urged people to avoid mosquito bites and to wear long sleeves and long pants when outdoors.
Joseph Goldstein covers health care in New York for The Times, following years of criminal justice and police reporting.
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