US Reports Malaria Cases After 20 Years In Florida And Texas, Officials Alarmed

Five cases of the mosquito-borne infection malaria have been detected in the United States in the past two months, alarming health officials, CBS News reported. Four of the cases were found in Florida, while the fifth was logged in Texas, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The disease has been locally acquired, as the patients hadn't traveled abroad. 

Although the patients were said to be improving after receiving treatment, the news has caused great concern as there hasn't been a case of malaria caught locally in the US in 20 years.

The last time malaria transmission was reported in the US was in 2003, when eight cases were detected in Palm Beach, Florida.

The CDC said in a health advisory that Anopheles mosquitoes, which are found throughout many regions of the country, “are capable of transmitting malaria if they feed on a malaria-infected person.” However, it stressed, the risk of catching malaria in the U.S. is “extremely low.”

Though these mosquitoes can be found in certain regions in the US, malaria is still rare in the US. Cases of Malaria in the US are all linked to travel outside the country by the infected people. However, this time, neither those involved in the Florida case nor the Texas case had traveled outside the country, meaning that the infection was acquired within US borders.

“It's always worrisome that you have local transmission in an area,” Estelle Martin, an entomologist at the University of Florida who researches mosquito-borne diseases, told Vox. 

Both Texas and Florida have issued alerts and recommended that residents drain standing pools of water, and make sure their window screens do not have holes in them. They have also advised clinicians to routinely obtain a travel history to determine if a patient with symptoms of malaria has spent time outdoors and been bitten by mosquitoes in an area with malaria activity.

Public health authorities are also monitoring and trying to control the local mosquito population, as per CNN.

"Malaria is a medical emergency and should be treated accordingly," the CDC wrote in a Health Alert Network Health Advisory. "Patients suspected of having malaria should be urgently evaluated in a facility that is able to provide rapid diagnosis and treatment, within 24 hours of presentation."

Meanwhile, scientists have been warning people that malaria could become more common in the US as temperatures warm.

"Rising global mean temperature will increase the climatic suitability of both diseases particularly in already endemic areas. The predicted expansion toward higher altitudes and temperature regions suggests that outbreaks can occur in areas where people might be immunologically naive and public health systems unprepared,'' according to a study published by The Lancet in 2021.

Malaria is a disease spread when the female anopheline mosquito feeds on a person with malaria and then feeds on another. Symptoms can include fever, chills, headache, muscle pain, fatigue, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, according to the CDC. Malaria can cause life-threatening damage, including kidney failure, seizures, and coma.

Treatment includes taking antimalarial drugs such as chloroquine or atovaquone and proguanil

In 2021, The World Health Organization said there were an estimated 247 million cases of malaria worldwide.