{"id":10485,"date":"2025-10-21T10:27:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T10:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/10485\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T10:27:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T10:27:08","slug":"mosquito-borne-disease-troubling-asia-and-the-caribbean-hits-new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/10485\/","title":{"rendered":"Mosquito-borne disease troubling Asia and the Caribbean hits New York"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A person in Long Island, N.Y., tested positive for chikungunya virus this month, the state health department said. It\u2019s the first locally acquired<\/a> case of the virus since 2019.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s little information about the patient, but the type of mosquito that carries chikungunya \u2014 Aedes \u2014 is found in parts of Long Island, east of New York City.<\/p>\n

The person started feeling symptoms in August and reported traveling outside the county but not abroad, the Nassau County health department said in a release<\/a>. The disease doesn\u2019t spread from person to person, but the infection is a sign that local mosquitoes could be carrying the disease. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s no need to panic, officials said.<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven the much colder nighttime temperatures, the current risk in New York is very low,\u201d State Health Commissioner James McDonald said in a statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chikungunya is spread by the same mosquitoes that transmit dengue and Zika viruses. Symptoms of chikungunya include fever and joint pain<\/a>, headaches, joint swelling and a rash, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It\u2019s rarely fatal but it can cause severe and debilitating illness. People 65 and older and those with chronic conditions are at higher risk.<\/p>\n

Over the summer, the disease exploded in China \u2014 an area where chikungunya isn\u2019t endemic. The country recorded more than 16,000 infections in Guangdong province as of Sept. 27, according to the World Health Organization<\/a>. The outbreak caused the CDC to issue a travel notice<\/a> for Americans in August.<\/p>\n

The virus is endemic in subtropical regions, including parts of the Caribbean, South America and Africa. But as temperatures rose this summer, unusual spots such as Italy and France started seeing infections too.<\/p>\n

The threat of mosquito-borne illnesses such as chikungunya and dengue is continuing to grow as a result of climate change. By 2050, the WHO expects 5 billion people<\/a> will be at risk from mosquito-borne infections as the bugs migrate.<\/p>\n

In fact, Los Angeles health officials said last week<\/a> that the department is investigating the first locally acquired dengue infection in 2025. Los Angeles County reported 14 locally acquired cases last year, an occurrence it called \u201cextremely rare.\u201d<\/p>\n

The CDC recommends people traveling to an outbreak region receive a vaccine. However, there is a caveat. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration ordered the live-virus vaccine manufactured by Valneva to be pulled from the market<\/a> in August. The move was based on safety concerns because the vaccine appeared to cause a chikungunya-like illness in some people.<\/p>\n

There were four reports of serious adverse events outside the U.S. in individuals ages 70 to 82, including hospitalizations. There is one other vaccine approved that does not use a live virus particle, the CDC says<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Even as temperatures start to cool in the fall, it\u2019s still worth protecting yourself from mosquitoes \u2014 especially in warmer areas of the U.S. where bugs remain active. Wearing clothing that covers your arms and legs and using bug spray are just some of the ways to minimize the number of bites.<\/p>\n

Nix writes for Bloomberg.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A person in Long Island, N.Y., tested positive for chikungunya virus this month, the state health department said.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10486,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[8569,8572,8570,3930,3931,8574,8571,8565,8566,3729,9,24,55,54,56,1232,8568,8567,8573],"class_list":["post-10485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-august","tag-bug","tag-caribbean","tag-cdc","tag-chikungunya-virus","tag-current-risk","tag-dengue","tag-disease","tag-infection","tag-mosquito","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-people","tag-person","tag-u-s-centers","tag-vaccine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10485\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}