A British content creator on vacation in Bali thought she had come down with the flu — but she had actually contracted dengue fever, a viral infection spread by mosquitoes that can be fatal if left untreated.
“I genuinely thought I had the flu, and I was expecting it to go fairly quickly,” Emma Cox, 27, told The Daily Mail on Thursday.
There’s been a record surge in dengue cases in Latin America and the Caribbean, while Europe is also experiencing a spike. France is doing what it can to prevent an outbreak at the Paris Olympics, which starts next month.
Nearly 2,000 dengue cases have been recorded in the US this year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC assures that the risk of widespread transmission in the continental US is low — most US cases occur in travelers infected elsewhere.
Puerto Rico (1,282 cases), Florida (178 cases) and New York (126 cases) have reported the most illnesses.
The tiger mosquito, or Aedes albopictus, is being blamed for the dengue rise. Elitza Theel, director of the Infectious Diseases Serology Laboratory at Mayo Clinic, told Fox News Digital this week that the mosquito species is moving further north globally as temperatures grow warmer.
“Tiger mosquitoes are also rather aggressive, biting both humans and animals at any time of the day, rather than just at dawn or dusk, which is typical of other mosquito species,” Theel said.
But there doesn’t appear to be an immediate tiger mosquito threat to the US.
“Although this species of mosquito is currently found in the US, at present it is considered a nuisance mosquito because the viruses it is competent to transmit are not circulating or endemic in the United States,” Theel explained.
For her part, Cox said she had been on the tropical island in Indonesia just a few days in May before experiencing muscle and joint pain, a burning sensation behind her eyes, exhaustion, and headaches so excruciating that she had to wear sunglasses indoors.
Three days after arriving home in the UK, she developed a full-body rash that prompted her to rush to the emergency room.
“It was so strange, I felt fine within myself,” she told the Daily Mail. “But I’d woken up with bumps all over my body — I’d never seen anything like it.”
Cox blamed a crack in the window of the place she was staying in Bali. She noted that she often woke up covered in bites.
She reports that she was in the hospital only for an hour. She was put on an IV and her blood was drawn before she was sent home. Her rash cleared up on its own within eight days.
Dengue symptoms include a high fever, a severe headache, especially behind the eyes, muscle and joint pain, nausea and vomiting, and a flat, red rash.
Patients usually experience symptoms for two to seven days before recovering.
Less than 5% of dengue infections become severe. More than 7,300 dengue-related deaths have been reported across the world in the last year, according to the World Health Organization.
The CDC notes that there is no specific medicine to treat dengue. Infected people are advised to rest, take acetaminophen for pain and fever, stay hydrated and see a doctor.
“It’s typically a more mild illness, but can be severe, causing headaches, joint pain, fever, abdominal pain and even death,” Dr. Mark Fischer, regional medical director of International SOS, a leading medical and security services company, told Fox News Digital.
