U.S. health officials say more than 20 people returning to the U.S. from Cuba had been infected with a virus transmitted by bugs.
HealthThis 2014 photo provided by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows a female Culex quinquefasciatus mosquito on the skin of a human host. – More than 20 people returning to the U.S. from Cuba have been infected with a virus transmitted by bugs in recent months, federal health officials said Tuesday. They all hadOropouche is a virus that is native to forested tropical areas.
It has sometimes been called sloth fever because scientists first investigating the virus found it in a three-toed sloth, and believed sloths were important in its spread between insects and animals.The virus is spread to humans by small biting flies called midges, and by some types of mosquitoes.
Some travelers have been diagnosed with it in the U.S. and Europe. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday saidso far — 20 in Florida and one in New York — all of whom had been in Cuba. European health officials previously saidSymptoms can seem similar to other tropical diseases like dengue, Zika or malaria. Fever, headaches and muscle aches are common, and some infected people also suffer diarrhea, nausea, vomiting or rash.
Some patients suffer recurring symptoms, and 1 in 20 can suffer more severe symptoms like bleeding, meningitis and encephalitis. It is rarely fatal, though there are recent reports of deaths in two healthy young people in Brazil.that infections might be passed on from a pregnant woman to a fetus — a potentially frightening echo of what was seen during Zika outbreaks nearly a decade ago.
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