TAMPA, Fla. – Two Florida residents have died from Eastern equine encephalitis, a mosquito-borne disease that is rare among humans but has infected a rising number of horses in the state, health officials said Friday.
Both deaths were in the Tampa area, where a woman died on July 1 and an infant died Wednesday, the Hillsborough County Health Department said. The disease known as EEE causes brain inflammation. There is no vaccine for humans.
“It’s a fairly rare disease,” said Steve Huard, spokesman for the Hillsborough health department.
Only a few human cases a year are reported in the United States, mostly in Atlantic and Gulf coast areas, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the disease kills 33 percent of its victims and survivors often have significant brain damage, the CDC said.
Hillsborough County has issued a mosquito-borne illness alert and sent a plane to spray pesticides to kill mosquitoes that breed in standing water, Huard said.
EEE outbreaks are not uncommon among horses in Florida during the wet summer months when mosquitoes proliferate.
Sixty cases have been reported among Florida horses this summer in several dozen counties, Florida Agriculture and Consumer Services Commissioner Charles Bronson said. Read More…
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