WFLA<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u201cAnd you know, this virus just kind of comes out of nowhere. She met the wrong mosquito, and that\u2019s it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Small was a globetrotter, and her daughter suspects a prior infection made this second bout fatal.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe traveled extensively all over the world, and maybe she had dengue once and didn\u2019t even know it,\u201d Anna said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd so this might have been a second exposure, and you know, who would know that it would be so serious.\u201d<\/p>\n
A second exposure can pack a deadly punch, triggering a severe immune reaction, infectious disease expert Dr. Adelor Zamora told WFLA.<\/p>\n
Gay Small, who died on her 80th birthday of dengue fever in Florida. Facebook\/Anna Small<\/p>\n
\u201cStudies say that if you get it the second time, it\u2019s even worse against the way that your immune system will react to the virus the second time around. It\u2019s more a robust immune reaction,\u201d Zamora said.<\/p>\n
Small\u2019s death is the Tampa Bay region\u2019s first dengue fatality in nearly a century, the Times reported.<\/p>\n
Florida health officials have confirmed 152 dengue cases statewide, with 134 clustered in Hillsborough County alone.<\/p>\n
Pinellas and Miami-Dade counties have reported seven cases each.<\/p>\n
An Asian Tiger mosquito feeds on the blood of a person in this undated file photo. Officials are warning about the rare mosquito invading the West Coast that has been known to carry Dengue fever and other diseases abroad. Getty Images<\/p>\n
With cases nearing 2023\u2019s record peak of over 200, 2026 is currently the state\u2019s second-worst year for dengue on record.<\/p>\n
Because most dengue infections are asymptomatic, actual cases likely far outnumber official reports.<\/p>\n
Symptoms include high fever, severe headache and flu-like aches.<\/p>\n
Hillsborough County authorities are working to extinguish the outbreak cluster by spraying pesticides and checking areas with pooled water where mosquitoes breed.<\/p>\n
Recent mosquito sampling indicates the outbreak is gradually dissipating.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An elderly Florida woman became the Sunshine State\u2019s first recorded dengue fever death in 2026 after she died…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":404315,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[75772,28,30,29,16687,135,4278],"class_list":["post-404314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-diseases","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-mosquitoes","tag-tampa","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404314\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}