Tampa, Florida: Florida Dengue Cases Reach 524 as Hillsborough County Extends Emergency to November 12

TAMPA, Florida (Orbit Post) Florida's locally acquired dengue cases reached 524 for the year in Florida Department of Health data released on Friday, November 6, up from 485 cases reported through October 24, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported. The newspaper called it the largest dengue outbreak in the United States in decades.

Hillsborough County, which includes Tampa, accounts for 407 of the 524 cases. Pinellas County has 80 cases, Miami-Dade County has 12 and Orange County has 10, with smaller counts in Pasco, Citrus, Manatee, Brevard, Broward, Palm Beach and Polk counties. Locally acquired cases have now been reported in 12 counties, the Herald-Tribune reported.

Emergency extended in Hillsborough County

Hillsborough County Administrator Bonnie Wise signed an executive order on Wednesday, November 5, extending the county's state of local emergency for dengue fever to November 12, the Brandon Dispatch reported. A state of local emergency in the county lasts seven days unless it is rescinded or extended. Declaring the emergency gives the county access to state resources and a path to reimbursement for response costs, FOX 13 reported.

Mosquito Management crews are increasing treatments by air and ground. County surveillance shows dengue virus activity in the mosquito population in many neighborhoods, the county said. FOX 13 reported that county mosquito officials say the treatment program is working in treated areas, and that traps in one East Lake area showed a 97 percent drop in Aedes aegypti, the mosquito species that spreads dengue.

One death confirmed

One death has been confirmed in Hillsborough County. An 80 year old woman, Gay Small, died of dengue infection along with septic shock and multi organ failure, according to a death certificate, the Herald-Tribune reported.

Twenty counties in Florida are under mosquito borne illness advisories or alerts. Hillsborough County is under a mosquito borne illness alert, the category the state health department uses when there is heightened disease activity or an increase in locally transmitted human cases.

The state data also counted eight locally acquired West Nile virus cases, one case of chikungunya in Miami-Dade County and one case of Eastern equine encephalitis in Leon County.

A record outbreak

Florida's previous recent high was 199 dengue cases in 2023, and the state reported 62 cases in 2025, the Herald-Tribune reported. The current outbreak also passes the 264 local cases recorded on Hawaii's Big Island between September 2015 and March 2016, which had been the largest recent outbreak in the United States.

Dengue is spread by mosquito bites, not from person to person. Symptoms show three to 14 days after the bite of an infected mosquito and include sudden fever, severe headache, eye pain and muscle and joint pain, which gave the disease its nickname of breakbone fever. About one in 20 people infected develops severe dengue, a medical emergency, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention figures cited by the Herald-Tribune.

The Florida Department of Health advises residents to drain standing water from containers, tires and pool covers, to keep pools chlorinated, to cover skin outdoors and to use repellent that contains DEET, picaridin or oil of lemon eucalyptus.