Phil Goodman, Florida Keys Mosquito Control District 2 Commissioner, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s been going on with the mosquitoes.
What does the cooler, drier air mean for the mosquito population?
Goodman said, “Last night, we had some rain and the high tides, are also a real breeding opportunity for mosquitoes, but with the cooler weather, everything in the mosquito’s body starts slowing down. There’s less of them, but there’s still enough around. Now, the numbers for the Aedes aegypti and the salt marsh mosquito, which are the two main mosquitoes here that we’re concerned with, the numbers have been pretty low for the last week or so, all up and down the Keys. We had a few hot spots in the Upper Keys and the salt marsh last week, and we did a little bit of truck spraying. But now, with this rain last night, we had about an inch in the Upper Keys, it looks like and also high tide. So our inspectors are out this morning, looking and we’ll be all week. So this will be a pretty active time for the next couple of weeks with this rain that we got last night. So it’s still a lot of activity for mosquito control. We’re doing a lot of our scheduled maintenance this time of year, but protecting us against mosquitoes is our number one job, so we’re still very active in that right now.”
There have been two new travel related cases of Dengue fever reported recently.
Goodman said, “The travel related and local transmission in Florida is continuing. I know last week we had about 22 cases of travel and about four or five cases of local, mostly still in Miami. The week before, 35 cases. So there have been hundreds of cases this year. So it’s been a really a bad year for dengue fever in the state of Florida. About 10 counties have really continued to have local transmission and also travel related cases. We had two travel related cases recently here in the in the Florida Keys. But we get to work right away when we learn there’s a travel related case, and that means somebody who’s traveled outside the US into an area where these diseases are endemic, and then they come into the US. They’re already infected, but they don’t have usually don’t have symptoms until they get here, and then they go to the doctor and find out they have dengue fever. But they’re travel related. But we go to their neighborhoods, where they are, and we do a lot of preventive treatments in those areas, just to be sure there’s no Aedes aegypti there, so that it doesn’t spread. So far we’ve been, we’ve been very lucky with that. So here in the Florida Keys right now, we have no local transmission. Those two cases really didn’t bring any local transmission. But for the state of Florida, this has really been a bad year. Last year was a record year. This year is going to be very close to it in Florida and a lot of this is because of some of the hurricanes. There’s many counties that still have a lot of standing water, thousands of acres of standing water from the last hurricane and this has caused the state, I think, in about 27 counties, has had to go in and hire contractors because the local mosquito control just can’t handle the increase in mosquitos and this is something I think that would never happen in the Keys. We can control all of our areas in the Keys with our aircraft, we can cover every square foot of the Keys within a couple of days here. So we don’t need this type of thing. But some of the areas in Florida that don’t have the mosquito control to the degree we have really need some help this year. So it’s been a bad year, and we’ll continue to have these travel related cases all the rest of this year and into the next year. It looks like just like we have for the last three or four years.”
What about worldwide cases?
Goodman said, “This last year was a record year. This year was sometimes twice as bad as last year. It’s really, really growing. Bangladesh, just last week, they had, in one day, they had 900 people hospitalized and six people died from dengue fevers and it’s continuing to be like that. I know in Brazil, they’ve had 12 million people infected this year and 4,000 deaths with dengue fever. And that’s just two countries. I mean, it’s really growing. The US is a real hub, particularly Florida is a real hub for travel from these countries that these diseases are in, particularly in Central and South America and the Caribbean. So we’re continuing to get these travel related cases in and it doesn’t take many Aedes aegypti in the local community. When a travel related case comes in, if one of those mosquitoes bites the infected person, then you’ve got dengue fever here locally. Since travel from these countries is going to continue, and in these endemic countries, are in the in the tropics, and they have these diseases all year long. So this is something I think that we’re going to continue to face for a long time. That’s a global problem. Unfortunately, there’s no real global solution. There’s a lot of things being tried and a lot of areas where a lot of good work is going on, mostly through grants and organizations. But just like in Brazil, there’s Oxitec is in several areas in Brazil, but Brazil is such a huge country, and they’re only treating certain areas and that in those areas are growing faster than the treatments can improve the situation. So it’s a very difficult situation. So mosquito controls here in Florida, we’re on the front lines of this, we’re the front line, the first line of defense and also the last line of defense. So it’s very fortunate that Florida has a really good Mosquito Control Association, and we have these local cases a few here and there, but I think with our with keeping the numbers down, we would prevent any huge increase of mosquito borne diseases here, particularly of dengue fever.”
Some mosquitos have become resistant to pesticides. What is being done to try to stay ahead of the curve?
Goodman said, “Bio pesticide is the word. I get letters almost weekly from universities and medical research institutes showing that they’ve taken on a research project for various types of bio pesticides and that name is pretty broad. A lot of them, from bacterias, a lot of them to genetic engineering, trying to re engineer the genetics in certain mosquitos to prevent this. This is not only Aedes aegypti. This is for malaria mosquitoes and other disease carrying mosquitoes as well. John Hopkins was the last one. I just got something from them last week with a new research project that they’ve undertaken. These are quite novel approaches because of the resistance of the better chemicals that we’re using and this is worldwide for malaria, for dengue fever, for other diseases, the mosquitoes are resistant. So long term, we’re not going to be able to chemically spray our way out of these diseases. So we have to have new technology. Fortunately, there’s a lot of work going on right now. It’ll take some time, I’m sure, before some of these are ready for experimental use and trying. Right now, the things that we are looking at are the sterile insect technique and we will be employing at least two of those technologies here in the Keys next year to really get going, because they’ve been approved for the irradiated mosquito and the Wolbachia. So we will be using them next year. We’ve already made arrangements, and this will become part of our tools, and we’ll just continue to look at them. Hopefully Oxitec will be approved sometime next year, and we can start using that as well. So here in the Keys, I think we’re in really good shape. We’re doing a good job now, but we need some new tools, and the new tools that we need are just right around the corner it looks like, but long term, there’s a lot of development going on at leading research institutions around the world that I think will make mosquito control in the future, at least something that we’re able to get some good results with worldwide.”
What can be done to prevent mosquito borne disease?
Goodman said, “Fortunately, the residents here have been very supportive of mosquito control. But we have a lot of new residents and new visitors here all the time, and we need to get the word out to them what they can do. This is something that we’re really focusing on now, for example, just picking up debris in your yard, because we know that almost 100% of the Aedes aegypti that we breed here in the Keys are bred on at our residences and our businesses and just walking around your property every week being sure there’s no trash, there no palm fronds, they also collect water and are good breeding sites for mosquitoes, to keep our yards clear. Just for example, if someone would drop a soft drink bottle cap on the ground in your property, and then a Aedes aegypti lays eggs in there, which they really love to do, and then it rains, within a week, you’ve got 100 to 200 Aedes aegypti that you’ve bred on your property. So things like that can really help us long term. So that’s part of our education program for that. We’re going to be launching more next year about how to really get the community even more involved because of the chance of dengue fever. There was a director of Public Health named Joseph Porter, and he was the first director of public health in Florida, and he was, this was going back in the late 1800s and he was instrumental in really working with yellow fever here in the Keys. One of the things he did when he started the Florida Mosquito Control Association, he said your challenge is keep everlastingly at it, and that’s what we had to do. Mosquito control is never ending. We’ll continue to do this, because they’re breeding every day readily, and that’s the job of the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District and also the job of our residents to help police their property.”