The United States had gone 20 years without a local acquired case of malaria until a recent outbreak in Florida. The Sunshine State was forced to issue a malaria alert for several counties when two more cases of the mosquito-borne disease surfaced.
And now there’s another state reporting a malaria case within its borders.
This alarming news comes as the nation is overwhelmed by the Biden open borders debacle and illegal migrants pouring in from underdeveloped parts of the world.
The Florida Department of Health found two more cases in Sarasota County, bringing the total to six. All of them are concentrated in this county, according to the Miami Herald.
Two of the patients were homeless victims suffering from fever and dehydration.
The agency issued a mosquito-borne illness advisory for Orange, Polk, and Walton counties along with the alert for Manatee, Miami-Dade, and Sarasota counties.
Florida issues malaria alert as 2 more cases discovered, first locally acquired US cases in 20 years https://t.co/LcNKFrJN5I
— TheBlaze (@theblaze) July 9, 2023
Far to the west, Texas now has a single case of locally acquired malaria. CNN reported that the Texas Department of State Health Services on Friday announced the discovery of the case.
Officials said they are “on the lookout for other cases.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that these recent incidents are the first two locally acquired cases of malaria in the U.S. in two decades. It said it is working with both states to investigate the cases and there’s no evidence that they are related.
That’s not to say there are no malaria cases in the country, as around 2,000 are reported annually. However, these previously originated from travelers and immigrants from areas of the globe where the disease is more widespread.
The illness resembles the flu and may be deadly if left untreated. The CDC said in 2020 there were 241 million cases worldwide with 627,000 deaths. Most of those were children in sub-Saharan Africa.
The good news is that the strain found in Florida and Texas is Plasmodium Vivax. The Medical University of South Carolina said that, if caught early, it “causes significantly fewer complications” than the more deadly strain.
Harvard infectious disease professor Dyann Wirth told NBC News that the cases are not a cause for panic. However, “it’s also not something where we should say, ‘Well, it’s so unusual, we shouldn’t worry about it.’”
Rather, he called it a warning to “keep surveillance up.”
