Health officials are warning Americans about a rare insect-borne virus that has infected several travelers. As of Aug. 16, there have been 21 cases of Oropouche virus disease, sometimes called "sloth fever," detected among U.
S. travelers returning from Cuba, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC said it wants clinicians and public health offices to be aware of the virus and to test for suspected cases, and for travelers to protect themselves from insect bites.
Here's what you need to know about the virus: Oropouche virus is an arthropod-borne virus, meaning a type of virus spread to people by the bite of infected arthropods, a group of insects. The virus is mainly spread to humans by infected culicoides prariensis, a species of biting midges, although it can be transmitted by certain mosquito species, according to the CDC. It is sometimes called "sloth fever" because scientists investigating the virus first found it in a three-toed sloth and the virus naturally live in sloths, non-human primates and birds.
"I think that really stems from the role of sloths as hosts in that natural transmission cycle," Dr. Chantal Vogels, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health, told ABC News. "But there's other animals involved as well.
" Oropouche virus is endemic to the Amazon basin -- including Bolivia, Colombia and Peru -- and was first discovered in a human in 1955 in a febrile forest worker in a village in Trinidad and T.