A mosquito-borne virus that has recently caused epidemics in the Caribbean has made its way to Alachua County.
There has been one confirmed case of the chikungunya virus in Alachua County, wrote Paul Myers, administrator of the Alachua County Health Department, in an email. The person contracted it during a recent trip to the Caribbean.
Myers said he doesn’t believe the infected person will transmit the virus to anyone else. Transmission of the virus is most likely to happen several days after a person becomes ill, and this window of time had already passed by the time the person came back to Florida, he said.
The virus is not passed from person to person, but rather, from mosquitoes to people. The person with the virus was isolated from exposure to mosquitoes upon returning to Alachua County, he said.
There have been 81 cases of the virus in Florida since the beginning of this year, according to a report by CBS Miami.
The symptoms of the virus include a sudden fever, severe joint pain and a headache, according to the World Health Organization website. The virus is rarely fatal.
There is no known vaccine available for the virus, and only rest and pain-relieving medication are recommended to treat symptoms.
Roxanne Connelly, a professor of entomology at UF, said Asian Tiger and Yellow Fever mosquitoes typically carry the virus. The virus poses a risk to the people living in Florida because at least one of these two kinds of mosquitoes is prevalent in every county in Florida, she said.
Nathan Burkett-Cadena, an assistant professor of mosquito ecology at UF, said local transmission of the virus occurs when an infected person gets bitten by a mosquito, which can then bite and infect another person who has no history of traveling to an area of active transmission, such as the Caribbean.
“It is notable that it turned up in the Caribbean because we (the Caribbean and Florida) basically share the same air space,” Burkett-Cadena said. “There’s lots of travel between Caribbean nations and Florida, specifically.”
Tips to protect you from mosquitoes
• Wear repellent.
• Make sure there are no open containers in backyards, which can hold water and become places where mosquitoes can reproduce.
• Mosquitoes go through their life cycles much more quickly during warmer temperatures and are therefore more abundant.
All information from Roxanne Connelly, a UF professor of entomology
[A version of this story ran on page 8 on 7/22/2014 under the headline "Caribbean virus in Alachua County"]
