A dengue fever alert has been issued in the Florida Keys following two confirmed cases of the mosquito-borne illness.
The local warning comes a week after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a national advisory about the increased risk of dengue virus infections in the United States.
Even though most of the dengue cases reported in the states so far this year have been travel-related, the two cases that triggered the alert in the Florida Keys were locally acquired, according to officials at the Florida Department of Health in Monroe County.
A total of 2,241 dengue cases have been reported so far this year in the U.S., including 1,498 cases in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, where a public health emergency was declared in March after cases exceeded historical figures.
The CDC reported 3,036 dengue cases last year in the U.S. and its territories.
The incidence of dengue fever internationally has been the highest on record, especially in Latin American countries, where more than 9.7 million dengue cases have been reported so far this year. That’s twice as many as in all of 2023 (4.6 million cases), according to the CDC.
