Another day, another potentially deadly or debilitating virus to worry about for America’s Florida snowbirds, where dengue fever is seeing another one of the concerning surges that have characterized the state in recent years. The mosquito bite-driven infection is a persistent blight on tropical locales such as Latin America and the Caribbean, but is increasingly making itself at home in the United States as well … particularly in the Sunshine State, which is again leading the United States in dengue infections throughout 2026, according to recently updated CDC data. The specter of the disease is increasingly difficult to ignore, particularly for the residents of Tampa who sound just a little bit concerned about the helicopters now passing over their heads spraying pesticides on the city, in an effort to interrupt the mosquito life cycle before the outbreak gets worse. When you’ve reached the “indiscriminate spraying of poison” stage, the time for pretending a problem doesn’t exist has clearly passed.
The number of dengue fever cases in the Tampa Bay region of #Florida has now surged to 65. www.fox13news.com/news/dengue-… via @fox13tampabay.bsky.social
— Craig Pittman (@craigtimes.bsky.social) 1:04 PM · Sep 5, 2026
The virus-causing dengue fever is suspected to have been around for going on 2,000 years at this point, and as far as we know it is entirely spread by female mosquitos of the genus Aedes. Said mosquitos were actually largely eradicated in Central and South America in the 1950s, but when those eradication programs were allowed to lapse, the disease returned with a vengeance by the 1980s and has been hyperendemic throughout the region ever since. Epidemics of dengue, meanwhile, are particularly possible because there’s a very wide range of outcomes in infection: Some people show no symptoms at all, while others became severely ill. Classic symptoms include sudden fever, severe headaches, eye pain, debilitating joint pain, and gastrointestinal bleeding, with some cases progressing to hemorrhagic fever that can be fatal. If treated, only about 1% of dengue cases are expected to be fatal (the U.S. has recorded no deaths in 2026), but the disease can still be a nightmare to endure. And any infected person, if bitten by a mosquito, can ultimately spread the virus to many others.
Most dengue cases in the U.S. are brought home by Americans who have traveled abroad, a pattern that has been in place for decades. In the last 15 years, this has typically involved annual cases in the range of 400 to 800, with only a tiny amount of transmission actually occurring in the United States. Since 2023, however, global dengue cases have surged, at least partially driven by a complex net of effects tied to climate change–warmer temperatures, for instance, decrease the time that it takes for a mosquito to become infectious after biting an infected person. And as cases in vacation destinations in Central America, South America, and the Caribbean have climbed, that has also led to a surge of dengue cases making their way back to the U.S., which in turn increases the risk of more local U.S. transmission. Cases in the U.S. shot all the way up to 3,352 in 2023 and 3,767 in 2024, before declining somewhat to 1,482 in 2025, a total that is still much higher than the recent average. This year’s cases are climbing once again, however, with the CDC putting the U.S. at 1,735 cases with a third of the year still left to go. Note, those numbers exclude U.S. territories like Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and American Samoa, where dengue is endemic.
No other state in 2026, meanwhile, has had even a fraction of the dengue fever cases of Florida, which the CDC puts above 200 at this point. Most concerningly, that involves at least 41 statewide cases that are believed to have involved local transmission, which means quite simply that Aedes mosquitos are successfully biting people in the state who are infected with dengue and then spreading the virus to new hosts. Hence, the helicopters now circling Tampa, spraying what local governments are referring to as “ultra-low volumes” of pesticides in an effort to break the mosquito spread and interrupt the chain of infection. One wonders, given the state’s MAGA leanings and tendencies toward misinformation on topics like vaccines and reproductive medicine, how its residents feel about a mass-pesticide campaign. Residents are apparently being told to stay indoors during spraying, and to do their part by dumping out any containers of standing water on their property where mosquitos are able to breed.
Inside the fight against mosquitoes spreading dengue fever in Florida
— Tampa Bay Times (@tampabaytimes.bsky.social) 4:30 PM · Sep 5, 2026
“The application method that we’re supplementing here using the orange helicopter… has been proven really effective during dengue transmission with Aedes aegypti specifically,” said Adriane Rogers of the Pasco County Mosquito Control District. “When using this method in conjunction with our other control tools, we will be able to stop this. This is going to take several weeks of interruption to that mosquito life cycle, to really get mosquito populations low enough that it can no longer sustain disease transmission.”
I know it’s asking far too much to even suggest this, but such a pox descending on our Floridian doorstep really should generate a new degree of empathy for one of America’s other near neighbors, Cuba, which has been utterly savaged by both dengue and the similar Chikungunya virus also carried by the same genus of mosquitos. Just 90 miles off Florida’s coast, the aftereffects of hurricanes, rolling blackouts and canceled trash collection have led to overwhelming amounts of mosquito-borne disease, which have infected potentially millions of Cubans in the course of the last year while the Trump administration has turned a completely blind eye to the suffering it has helped exacerbate. Like dengue, chikungunya can cause sudden high fever and debilitating joint pain that can leave sufferers unable to stand or walk. And guess what? The CDC estimates that more than 100 U.S. travelers have also come down with chikungunya this year as well. How long before we bring that one back to the homestead for some local transmission as well?
33 people in Cuba have died in chikungunya & dengue outbreaks, most of the deaths involve children. The mosquito-borne infectious viruses have affected at least one-third of the Cuban population, Cuban health experts say 👇
— Delthia Ricks (@dricks.bsky.social) 6:18 PM · Dec 2, 2025
Before too much longer, the mosquito-borne menace that has crippled Cuba may well be our own problem to deal with. But hey, maybe Florida has it all under control? Considering where the state’s funds designated for healthcare have actually ended up in recent years, I wouldn’t count on it.
