Disease-carrying mosquitoes targeted for spraying
Broward monitoring insects known to spread viruses such as Zika
After trapping a high number of the type of mosquitoes that carry diseases, Broward County is getting aggressive.
This weekend, Broward will target four areas of the county where traps have caught larvae or adult diseasecarrying mosquitoes known as Aedes aegypti that have the possibility to spread viruses like Zika. Those areas are Pembroke Pines, Dania Beach, Fort Lauderdale and Hollywood.
In addition, Broward Mosquito Control is going door-to-door and spraying in areas throughout the county in which the Broward Department of Health has reported cases of individuals with chikungunya fever and dengue fever.
The Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention has put local health departments on alert after seeing a spike in cases of those mosquitotransmitted illnesses in Cuba, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and other Caribbean islands. Broward County has seven confirmed or probable cases of dengue or chikungunya this year, according to the Florida Department of Health. Florida overall had 26 reported cases of those diseases.
The last recorded outbreak of dengue in Florida occurred in 2013.
Dengue causes high fever, muscle and joint pain, pain behind the eyes, vomiting and fatigue. The most common symptoms of chikungunya infection are fever and joint pain. The joint
pain can be debilitating, and last for a few days or a few weeks, according to the CDC.
“It will feel similar to a bad flu,” said Anh Ton, Director of Broward County’s Highway and Bridge Maintenance Division, which oversees mosquito control. Ton said the potential spread of diseases rises during mosquito and travel season. There is no treatment for any of the mosquitotransmitted diseases.
“Materials we spray will last six weeks but we will monitor and if the trap counts show we still a high number of the Aedes aegypt mosquito we will have to go back,” Ton said.
The spraying is being done a week earlier than originally planned because of the heavy rains and high number of mosquito larvae discovered.
Over the last three years, Miami-Dade and Broward counties have poured millions into combating the Aedes aegypti mosquito, the primary carrier of Zika disease. Miami became the first city in the continental United States to report a local outbreak of Zika in summer 2016, however the county has not reported a locally transmitted Zika infection since 2017. The Zika virus, can cause Guillain-Barre syndrome or muscle weakness, and lead to neuro-developmental disorders in babies born to infected mothers.