Mosquito-borne illness advisory lifted in Sarasota, Manatee counties

SARASOTA COUNTY, Fla. - Officials with Sarasota and Manatee counties announced Tuesday that the medical alert status related to malaria that the Florida Department of Health (FDOH) had issued for those two counties has been lifted. 

In June, the FDOH issued a mosquito-borne illness alert for Sarasota and Manatee counties. Over the summer, seven local cases of malaria were reported in Sarasota County. 

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Sarasota County Mosquito Control District Director Wade Brennan said people shouldn't stop taking precautions, however, now that the alert status has been lifted. 

"That doesn’t mean that we don’t want people to take precautions because there’s still a possible risk," Brennan said. "But it means that we’re out of that alert status, which is fantastic. That means – as Chris (Lesser, the director of the Manatee Mosquito Control District) was saying before – our integrated pest management programs have been very effective."

Brennan and Lesser joined Hernando County Mosquito Control director Sandra Fisher-Grainger, Florida Keys Mosquito Control District Chairman Phil Goodman, and the Florida Mosquito Control Association (FMCA) for a virtual panel discussion Tuesday. 

"Over the past three, three-and-a-half months, we have performed a total of eight aerial spray missions covering about 160 square miles. We dedicated several teams to investigate larval breeding habitats on a daily basis for three months," Lesser said. "We had a whole department dedicated to collecting individual mosquitos and sending those individual mosquitos to the Florida Department of Public Health and the CDC for testing of malaria."

Pasco County officials told FOX 13 on Tuesday they are paying close attention to the kinds of mosquitos popping up in the community and if they have the potential to carry and spread disease. 

"When the water’s standing for about two weeks, it starts getting more polluted [and] more organic material in the water. That's what some of the disease vectors really like," Pasco County Mosquito Control District Executive Director Adriane Rogers said. "Now that we’re a good two-weeks post-storm, we're starting to see some of our disease vector species really increase. So those are the ones we’re focusing on right now."

The county’s treatment plan includes helicopters treating targeted areas with larvicide and trucks spraying neighborhoods almost every night, according to Rogers. 

Data collected just last week from the state health department shows no cases of locally acquired Zika, malaria, or dengue fever.