Washington Post Anthony S. Fauci, the former top U.S. infectious-disease expert, was hospitalized last month with the mosquito-borne West Nile virus. On Monday, Maryland announced its first confirmed case of the diseasethis year. And the biting insects seem to be everywhere in the Washington region.
Attention on West Nile, the most common disease spread by mosquitoes, is high with more than three weeks of hot, humid D.C. summer still ahead of us.
Mosquitoes carry other diseases, such as eastern equine encephalitis, which killed an adult in New Hampshire this month and is seen rarely in our region — typically once every five to eight years. Locally, experts say, cases of mosquito-borne illness such as Zika, malaria and dengue fever are isolated and usually imported by people who traveled internationally.
The good news, experts say, is most people infected with West Nile never know it and there are ways to prevent bites besides hiding indoors until fall.