Gwynn Guilford reports that Hawaiian mosquitoes have been busy it seems. Local health authorities just confirmed 10 new cases of dengue fever, an excruciating disease nicknamed breakbone fever. That brings the total to 23 so far this year. But there is something especially worrisome about these new 10 cases, though. They came from the bites of local mosquitoes. This ups the risk of an epidemic - an ominous prospect for a state that earns nearly 20% of its GDP from tourism. After the first dengue cases were confirmed in a 2001 epidemic that tore through the island of Maui, the average number of daily visitors fell 30%.
News of the virus may have have gone viral. Allie Wesenberg, a star of the video web series Internet Killed Television, had returned to Florida from a Hawaii vacation when she fell ill and was hospitalized. However, it is not yet certain whether she, or the eight or nine people in their tour group, have dengue.
A state epidemiologist insisted that Florida does not have local dengue in our mosquitoes. It turns out, though, Hawaiian mosquitoes most definitely do, which means that the outbreak can get much bigger unless officials and the community either kill the mosquitoes or prevent people from being bitten. Neither is easy. Dengue, which causes searing eye, head and bone pain, and has no cure, spreads when a mosquito sucks the blood of someone who is already carrying the virus, and then bites another person who has not yet been infected.
Most cases occur in Latin America, Asia, and the Caribbean, in densely populated cities where the most notorious dengue-carrying mosquito, Aedes aegypti, thrives. The problem for tourist destinations like Hawaii and other developed-world vacation hotspots is that visitors from all over, including dengue-endemic places, who want to spend time outside, making them more likely to be bitten. Tell them to stay indoors or slather themselves in DEET.
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