A Long Beach resident recently contracted dengue fever despite not traveling outside of the United States, city officials have announced — making this the second such case in California.
Pasadena health officials confirmed a case of mosquito-borne dengue fever last month in a resident who had also not traveled outside the U.S.
The Long Beach resident has recovered and there are no other suspected cases, city health officials said in a Wednesday afternoon, Nov. 1, press release. Local exposure risk remains low.
“The health and well-being of the community is our most important priority,” Mayor Rex Richardson said in a statement. “We are working closely with health officials to do everything we can to prevent more cases. We ask that everyone do their part by removing any standing water on their property to help us control the mosquitoes in our neighborhoods.”
Dengue is one of multiple mosquito-borne illness, like yellow fever or the more locally common West Nile virus. Dengue is spread when an Aedes species mosquitoes infected with the virus bites a human.
No mosquitoes collected by the Long Beach Department of Health and Human Services have tested positive for dengue, the city said.
Dengue fever is uncommon in the U.S.. So people typically contract it when they travel abroad. Dengue fever is frequent in many parts of Central and South America, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific Islands, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — with about 4 billion people living where there’s a risk of the disease.
That’s about half the world’s population.
Up to 400 million people get infected with dengue annually, the CDC said, with about 100 million getting sick and 40,000 dying from severe cases.
But in the U.S., according to CDC data, there had only been 1,437 confirmed cases this year, as of Oct. 25. Only 583 cases were locally acquired — and all but 63 of those were in Puerto Rico. That data, though, did not…
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