Four new Dengue fever cases have been confirmed in the Florida Keys

Four more cases of Dengue fever have been confirmed in the Upper Florida Keys.

This makes 26 cases reported this year by the Florida Department of Health in Monroe County.

“All indications of these infections show that they were locally acquired,” the health department said in a news release. “These individuals received medical treatment and are expected to make a full recovery.”

Most of the cases are in a two-mile area of Key Largo.

This is the first outbreak of Dengue the Keys have seen in a decade.

During the summer and fall of 2009, 22 people were confirmed as having Dengue fever in Key West after a 70-year absence. In 2010, 66 cases of locally acquired Dengue associated with Key West were reported in Florida with onset dates between March and November 2010, according to the health department.

Dengue fever can be a painful, debilitating disease but is rarely fatal, according to the department.

Dengue can present as a severe flu-like illness with severe muscle aches and pain, fever and sometimes a rash. Ir’s not contagious but is transmitted by the bite of an infected aedes aegypti mosquito.

That mosquito is the same one that carries the Zika virus, which has symptoms similar to Dengue.

This story was originally published August 4, 2020 at 7:40 AM.

Gwen Filosa

Miami Herald

Gwen Filosa covers Key West and the Lower Florida Keys for FLKeysNews.com and the Miami Herald and lives in Key West. She was part of the staff at the New Orleans Times-Picayune that in 2005 won two Pulitzer Prizes for coverage of Hurricane Katrina. She graduated from Indiana University.