Yellow fever threatens South Florida after Zika scare

mosquitoes and climate for it to spread.

The disease is deadlier than the Zika virus. Zika raised alarms because many infected pregnant women gave birth to infants having microcephaly, a condition that causes abnormally small heads and developmental defects. Yellow fever can kill. Brazil reported 1,131 cases and 338 deaths attributable to yellow fever from July to March.

Most people infected with yellow fever will get symptoms so minor they won’t realize they have been infected. Even for those who do notice, the symptoms such as fever, chills and headaches don’t make it stand out from many other illnesses.

But for about 15 percent of the infected, the initial symptoms pass and then come back with a vengeance within a day, causing internal bleeding and jaundice — the yellowing of the skin that gives the fever its name — the failure of the liver and other organs. Of those, up to half die, usually within a week or two.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned travelers in March not to go to yellow fever hotspots in Brazil unless they were vaccinated.

South Florida officials hope the stepped-up mosquito control efforts already in effect to curb Zika will help contain any potential yellow fever outbreak. Yellow fever and Zika are carried by the same Aedes aegypti mosquito, which can also transmit dengue and chikungunya.

“If yellow fever is introduced into South Florida, and I suppose it will be, you’re not going to see the same explosive outbreak we did with Zika,” said Justin Stoler, an assistant professor of geography at the University of Miami who has done global health research with a focus on mosquito-borne illnesses. “There hasn’t been prior exposure, but we’ve kept mosquito populations down, which is a good thing.”

Broward County began its first truck spraying of the year April 30 to kill infant mosquitoes that are expected to multiply as the region’s heavy rains increase, said Anh Ton, who oversees Broward’s mosquito control.

South Florida’s rainy season runs from May 15 to Oct. 15, according to the National Weather Service. The truck spraying is designed to kill mosquito larva in standing water, as opposed to aerial spraying that targets adult mosquitoes.