More than 20 people returning to the United States from Cuba have been infected with an insect-borne virus in recent months, federal health officials said Tuesday. All have suffered from Oropouche fever, also known as sloth fever.
None of them have died, and so far there is no evidence that the virus is spreading in the United States. AFPBut officials are warning U.S. doctors to be on the lookout for infections in travelers from Cuba and South America.
Oropouche is a virus native to tropical forest areas. It was first identified in 1955 in a 24-year-old forest worker on the island of Trinidad and is named after a nearby village and wetland.
It was sometimes called sloth fever because scientists who first studied the virus found it in three-toed sloths, and believed that sloths played an important role in spreading the virus among insects and animals.
The virus is also transmitted to humans through the bites of flies and some mosquitoes. People have become infected while visiting forested areas and are thought to be the ones who bring the virus to cities, but human-to-human transmission has not yet been documented.
There is no vaccine or medicine for it yet.
Since the end of last year, the virus has been identified as the cause of large outbreaks in the Amazon region, where it was already known, and in new areas in South America and the Caribbean. About 8,000 local cases have been reported in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba and Peru.
So far, only a handful of travelers in the United States and Europe have been diagnosed, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said Tuesday.
So far, 21 cases have been reported in the United States — 20 in Florida and one in New York — all of which were in Cuba.
European health officials said earlier they had detected 19 cases, almost all among travelers.
Symptoms may be similar to other tropical diseases such as dengue fever and Zika virus, but they also resemble malaria. Fever, headache, and muscle aches are common, and some infected people may have diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, or a rash.
Symptoms return in some patients, and up to 1 in 20 patients may develop more serious symptoms such as bleeding, meningitis and myelitis. It is rarely fatal, although the deaths of two otherwise healthy young Brazilians have recently been reported.
There is no vaccine to prevent infection, and no medications are available to treat the symptoms.
In Brazil, authorities are investigating reports that the infection can spread to fetuses in pregnant women, a potentially frightening echo of what was seen during the Zika virus outbreak nearly a decade ago.
The CDC recommends that pregnant women avoid nonessential travel to Cuba, and recommends that all travelers take steps to prevent insect bites, such as using insect repellent and wearing long-sleeved shirts and long pants.
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