Dengue fever, transmitted by mosquitoes, is spreading across the United States. Cases are particularly high in Florida, where 152 locally acquired cases have been recorded.
That This is the highest number of dengue cases recorded since 2023, when there were 189 locally acquired cases over the year. According to the Tampa Bay Times, the outbreak has resulted in the death of 80-year-old Tampa resident Gay Small. This is Florida’s first locally acquired dengue death in nearly a hundred years.
State health officials have been tight-lipped about the case, but Small’s family revealed her condition declined rapidly, from tremors and slurred speech to organ failure on her 80th birthday. Small’s case offers a peek into one of the strange quirks of dengue: catching one of its four known strains doesn’t protect you against the others.
This is important, as experts suspect Small survived an undiagnosed strain abroad years ago, leaving her vulnerable to a fatal second infection from a local bite.
Florida Reports First Dengue Death as Mosquito-Borne Virus Spreads
Mosquitoes were, of course, the culprit here, but specifically Aedes mosquitoes. It’s an aggressive variety that needs only a little water to create a nursery. Three-fourths of infected people show no symptoms, but the remaining quarter have to endure a horrible fever, nausea, and severe body aches that seemingly reach out to the bone, hence dengue’s nickname, “breakbone fever.” About 1 in 20 who contract it develop severe dengue, where blood vessels leak fluid and blood pressure crashes.
There is no antiviral cure, and there is no approved vaccine for average adults in the US. If you get it, you have to stick to tried-and-true methods: drink plenty of fluids, get plenty of rest, and hope it doesn’t get worse. It makes sense that if your body aches from dengue, you would take an over-the-counter pain reliever like ibuprofen or aspirin.
You should not do that at all, as a lot of these drugs raise the risk of bleeding, and the problem is that dengue does that, too. The best thing you can do is slather yourself in mosquito repellent and wear long sleeves if you’re in mosquito-heavy places like Florida.
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