Sarasota (Fla.) Memorial Hospital has treated five patients with malaria amid the nation's first locally transmitted outbreak in two decades, NPR reported July 26.
"The cases that are coming in are classic malaria, you know they come in with fever, body aches, headaches, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea," Manuel Gordillo, MD, Sarasota Memorial's director of infection control, told NPR.
Typically, the hospital treats one or two patients annually who acquire the infection while traveling abroad. The first patient with locally acquired malaria was admitted to the hospital in late May. Because the individual hadn't traveled recently — and because their symptoms mirrored many other diseases — malaria was not on clinicians' radars. Physicians only considered malaria as a diagnosis after laboratory workers detected parasites in the patient's blood sample, according to Dr. Gordillo.
So far, all five patients have responded well to treatments, he added.
In total, eight people in the U.S. have contracted malaria from mosquitoes locally — seven in Florida and one in Texas. All cases involve the Plasmodium vivax strain. The cases mark the first local outbreak since 2003, when eight people tested positive in Palm Beach, Fla.