(WWJ) – Medical experts are raising concerns after the CDC issued a warning over malaria due to five confirmed cases in Florida and Texas.
What makes the cases unusual is that they have no connection to travel. On a new Daily J podcast, WWJ’s Zach Clark asks health professionals – given all the mosquitoes in Michigan, are we at risk?
Dr. Lea Monday, an infectious disease specialist at the Detroit Medical Center, says what’s not known about the cases in Florida and Texas is exactly how the malaria got there.
“Did the mosquito bite somebody that had come from abroad with malaria and then bite somebody else? Or did it come there some other way? That’s actually still being traced,” she said.
The unknown origin and lack of travel is what’s leaving experts concerned.
“The danger of cases being transmitted locally is if that person presents to, say an urgent care with a fever, the people there might not even know to think of malaria because the person hasn’t traveled, so they might assume that that’s not on the table,” she said.
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