TAMPA, Florida — The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has activated a Level 3 emergency response for dengue outbreaks in Florida and the Republic of the Marshall Islands, its eighth emergency activation of the year, MedPage Today reported on October 22.
Source: Becker's Hospital Review (reporting MedPage Today)
Florida officials have recorded 745 dengue cases in 2026, 425 of them locally acquired and most concentrated in the Tampa area — the largest dengue outbreak in the continental U.S. since 1935, according to MedPage Today.
'Given the widespread presence of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes and with recent hurricane-related rainfall, continued domestic transmission remains a concern,' Chris Braden, MD, acting director of the CDC's National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, wrote in an email shared with MedPage Today.
On a call with clinicians on Thursday, CDC experts said the locally acquired Florida cases primarily involve the DENV-2 type, about 54% of cases are in men, and the median age was 43, with 45% of cases in people aged 30 to 49, MedPage Today reported via Becker's. The CDC said 47% of cases required hospitalisation, which may point to under-reporting of milder infections. No dengue vaccine is licensed in the United States.
The new totals are a sharp jump from earlier this month, when the Associated Press reported nearly 300 locally acquired cases — already the largest in a U.S. state in decades, with Florida's previous worst year 2023 recording just under 200 locally spread cases. Officials in Hillsborough County and surrounding counties had declared local emergencies, and workers in the Tampa area were spraying day and night to cut the mosquito population, AP reported.