LOS ANGELES -- Health officials warned Wednesday that the Los Angeles area is seeing more dengue fever cases in people who have not traveled outside the U.S. mainland, a year after the first such case was reported in California.
Public health officials said at least three people apparently became ill with dengue this month after being bitten by mosquitoes in the Baldwin Park neighborhood east of downtown Los Angeles. “This is an unprecedented cluster of locally acquired dengue for a region where dengue has not previously been transmitted by mosquitoes,” said Barbara Ferrer, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. Other cases that stemmed from mosquito bites originating in the U.
S. have been reported this year in Florida, the U.S.
Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, where officials have declared a dengue epidemic . There have been 3,085 such cases in the U.S.
this year, of which 96% were in Puerto Rico, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Cases of dengue have been surging globally as climate change brings warmer weather that enables mosquitoes to expand their reach. Dengue fever is commonly spread through the bite of infected Aedes mosquitoes in tropical areas. While Aedes mosquitoes are common in Los Angeles County, local infections weren't confirmed until last year, when cases were reported in Pasadena and Long Beach.
Before then, the cases in California were all associated with people traveling to a region where dengue i.