United States: According to the latest reports, the health officials of New York announced the death of an adult from Ulster County after he contracted the infection of eastern equine encephalitis, a fatal mosquito-borne illness detected last in New York in 2015.
More about the news
The expert reports suggest EEE has a fatality rate of thirty percent among humans, where there is no vaccine available to prevent it. Moreover, those who survived are more likely to face serious and chronic health effects.
Annually, cases related to mosquito bite-related EEE cases in the US pop up from two or three counties; however, this year, fifteen counties have reported positive cases.
Since its first ever recorded cases, back in 1938, when 25 people lost their lives, Massachusetts had more of them coming up than any other state in the country, as mentioned by state epidemiologist Dr. Catherine Brown, nymag.com reported.
According to Brown, the danger of EEE has been rising, and climate change has been a major actor responsible for all of this. However, several states’ public health agencies are trying to combat the menace by implementing various mitigation measures after the COVID lockdowns.
Spread of the triple E
The experts state that Migrating songbirds brought and spread the Triple E into the state as they moved northward. The large swamp systems of Massachusetts have habitats of both birds and mosquitoes, where the spread occurred into humans and horses.
Brown said that it is considered an outbreak whenever there is more than one human case. Currently, there are four human cases, along with 96 positive mosquito samples. However, this count is yet lower than what the nation had in 2019, where there were 12 human cases and six deaths, along with 300 hundred positive mosquito samples.
Role of climate change
It is seen that there is a change in the pattern of EEE outbreaks historically, partly due to climate change. In the 2004 to 2006 cycle, five cases were seen. In the 2010 to 2012 cycle, there were seven. And from 2019 to 2020, there were a total of 12 cases, nymag.com reported.
Therefore, it is clearly visible that the rising impact of the disease is there on humans. Experts are worried that climate change has a major part to play in this.
Spread of the disease in the Northeast
As Brown believes, problems such as the West Nile virus and triple E are likely to grow further in the future, with the increasing establishment of Asian tiger mosquito numbers in the Northeast.
Furthermore, it is also believed that there is a possibility of rising numbers of local transmission of diseases such as malaria, dengue, chikungunya, and all the other viruses.