YOU can help keep mosquitoes at bay in the Keys

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.

Storms certainly affect how the Mosquito Control District can do its job.

Goodman said, “First of all, we’ve been lucky compared to other parts of the state and nation with the major impacts of these storms, but they have certainly impacted the mosquito population. The biggest one was right before Milton, the week before, we had a front come through that rained, most of the week with a lot of rain, and we couldn’t get out and treat during that time because of the rain and the wind. Then once that passed through, Milton came through and so we had several days there where we were unable to treat as well. So some of these mosquitoes that were breeding from that front, they actually became adult mosquitoes and we’ve been having to kind of catch up. This week we’ll be playing catch up by this weekend, and I guess all through the week, catch up. But the numbers are not really high. A lot of this high rain that we had and high tides as well, they brought a lot of fish into these areas. So the fish helped us quite a bit, eating the mosquito larvae. So the numbers are higher than we want right now, we’ll be really working this week with adulticiding by truck, also a couple of aerial missions, and then continuing to larvicide. It looks like this week is we’re going to have some rain as well, so hopefully by the end of this week, though, we will be caught up. But the situation right now is, really, the counts are not that high anywhere in the Keys.”

Dengue fever is one of the diseases that mosquito control is trying to stem.

Goodman said, “We had three local cases in June, all in the same area, basically and we really hit those areas hard. We didn’t get any further local transmission in any of those areas. We have had a few travel related cases come in, but we hit those areas really hard. We have no Dengue fever in the Florida Keys at this time. In Florida, there are eight counties that have had Dengue fever, the biggest ones being Miami Dade and Broward. I think the last two weeks, they had about 47 cases of travel related in Florida, mostly in Miami Dade and Broward. So it’s continuing. Normally, as you get into October, November, December, you see these trailing off as far as local transmission. But now with all of the travel related cases coming in from places, mainly Cuba and other South Central American, Caribbean countries, this has continued. It has continued for the last four years. We didn’t see a break in Miami Dade going from November, December into January. It just continues. So it’s likely we’ll have that again this year and continuing. It’s a global problem. It needs a global solution. But unfortunately, there’s really not a good global solution for all of these countries where, particularly, Dengue fever is endemic. Dengue fever is the only one that we are really concerned with here in the Florida Keys. But in Florida, they’ve had a lot of malaria this year, about 60 cases, of all travel related coming in, about 24 counties all in the middle of the state, a little bit in the south. We haven’t had any here. Also diseases like Eastern Equine Encephalitis, St Louis encephalitis, and West Nile virus. These viruses are present in a number of counties, about over 20 counties in Florida. Not huge numbers. But these diseases are endemic. These are really diseases that are quite severe, that have a lot of lasting neurological problems once you get the infection. We haven’t had any of those diseases here. We’re on the lookout, but this is more of a northern and central Florida type of thing. With Oropouche virus, this new one that’s come in, we continue to see travel related cases coming in, mainly to Miami, also from Cuba. So Dengue and Oropouche are the two that are coming in, mainly in South Florida, and pretty big numbers, but we’ve been able to keep them both out of the Florida Keys and Monroe County, and hopefully we’ll be able to continue to do that, but it is a concern. These are going to be with us for a long time we feel and there’s about 22 counties in Florida right now that have advisories and alerts from the Florida Department of Health. So we’re fortunate here that we’ve been able to keep these out. Dengue is the main one that we’re concerned with, and we have a pretty good regimen to treat those areas, and we’re really hitting the areas hard that have this Aedes aegypti mosquito that transmits this disease. So we’re hitting those areas hard, I think doing a pretty good job, and we’ll continue to work hard at it.”

The 75th anniversary of the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District was held recently.

Goodman said, “It was a very good event. We were really concerned, when you plan these things in the Keys, particularly in hurricane season, you’re not really sure how these things are going to come out. But we had a lot of media coverage on this, a lot of preparation. And last Tuesday was the nicest day we had had in a long time. The sun was out. This was the day before, actually Milton really arrived. We had a lot of people attending. We had an open house. We had a lot of learning stations set up in our hangar, where our residents, could go by, looking at stations and learning about mosquito control, the science of mosquito control, the life cycles of the mosquitoes, how this impacts our decisions when to treat. We had an aerial demonstration, a live aerial demonstration, with one of our helicopters, all our pilots and research people were there to talk and make presentations. We ended up with a cake cutting and refreshments. It was really a nice event. The history of mosquito control here in the Florida Keys is very interesting. Basically 75 years ago, the legislature authorized what is today the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District. What they did was Key West had one man in one truck spraying DDT, and they had been doing this for a couple of years. That was the only mosquito spraying in in the Keys. When we were formed, we took over that man and truck and then expanded to what we have today, which is starting at real humble beginnings with no role model whatsoever to establish a mosquito control we’ve turned today into one of the most modern and high tech mosquito control in the world. So, 75 years we’ve done a lot, and no one can even imagine what’ll happen in the next 75 years.”

Michael Stapleford of KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM said, “I understand it was a tremendous success and certainly hats off to everybody that makes mosquito control what it is each and every day, including yourself in the leadership role.”

Keeping the public informed as to what they can do to help prevent mosquito borne diseases is also important.

Goodman said, “this is becoming more important to us. For years, mosquito control was, I call it kind of a stealth organization. We didn’t really get out in the public. We did our job and we didn’t really mind if people thought there were no mosquitoes here, that we were doing our job. But today, with the increase of mosquito borne disease, and we have over 50,000 residents and businesses here, each one is a potential breeding site for the Aedes aegypti mosquito and in the season, you really need to inspect these properties every week. With the people we have, there’s no way to get to 50,000 residents every week, so we need more and more of the people looking after their property, walking around each week dumping water, because that’s where these Aedes aegypti, they live around our homes. They live in water that’s fresh water that maybe just rained in a saucer that was left on the lawn, or something like that. If people will do this, this will help a lot in reducing the number of potential Dengue cases here in the Florida Keys. So this is going to be a big effort going forward now, and this open house was kind of the kickoff of that, trying to really keep the public informed of how they can really be a part of mosquito control and help keep the community safe, just by doing a few things around their home. So that’s going to be a big effort going forward. You can get several hundred mosquitoes breeding in just about a bottle cap full of water that is laying out on your lawn, or a trash can cover that’s lying out there, open and collecting water, or a tarp that’s collecting water. These mosquitoes can just really breed everywhere. They want to be around our homes, because they prefer human blood to produce their eggs, whereas other mosquitoes go out and they can bite an iguana or a bird or a chicken or dog or cat, but these particular mosquitoes like to feed on human blood. As soon as they’re born and become adults, first thing they do is the females is go out and try to bite people and get start collecting blood, so that they can produce eggs and if everybody can focus on it’s a pretty easy thing to really significantly reduce those number of potentials.”

The free tire recycling program can really help.

Goodman said, “The next one will be on November 2 from nine o’clock till two o’clock. This is a Saturday, and it’ll be at all three of the county’s transfer stations in Key Largo and Long Key and Cudjoe Key, and you’ll be able to take your used old tires there, free of charge, and drop them off, I think, up to six per person, with proof that you are a Monroe County resident. This is very important for mosquito control, because these Aedes aegypti love to breed in these tires. An old tire lying around just collects water and if you try, you cannot get the water out of a tire, no matter how you turn it, once it gets water in it, it’s going to stay in there. It’s really hard to get all the water out. It’s a perfect breeding site for mosquitoes. So we want to keep those things out of the Florida Keys. So this is a very important program. They do it several times a year, and so does mosquito control and we certainly support their efforts.”