The US Is Not Equipped to Handle Increased Threat of Tick- and Mosquito-Borne Viruses, Experts Say

At a workshop last week, global health experts warned that countries like the U.S. are not ready for the looming threat that insects and the diseases they carry pose. 

The problem started in the 1970s and ‘80s when the Aedes albopictus mosquito breed came to the U.S. via the used tire trade. The stowaway insects more widely known as Asian tiger mosquitoes often carry viruses like Dengue, Zika and Chikungunya. The critters quickly adapted to city life in regions throughout the U.S. 

Decades later, thanks to globalization and climate change, insects and the diseases they carry are spreading more rapidly around the globe. 

"If we don't do anything, which is basically what we're doing right now, it's going to get worse," Tom Scott, a medical entomologist and professor emeritus at UC Davis, said during the workshop, per reporting from NPR. "The damage from inaction is enormous, it's unacceptable. It's unethical."

The two-day workshop focused on arboviral threats —  mosquito- and tick-borne viruses that can cause harm to humans. Scientists raised alarm stating that tropical diseases that were once far away from the U.S. are quickly creeping closer to North America. 

For example, the U.S. saw locally transmitted cases of malaria and skin disease caused by tropical parasites this year. A Zika virus outbreak happened in Florida and Texas in 2016-2017 and dengue has spread across the U.S. each year for over a decade, health experts learned at the workshop. 

Laura Kramer, director of the Arbovirus Laboratory at the State University of New York at Albany, told workshop attendees that the U.S. does not take the rising threats as seriously as other countries. 

"We don't pay enough attention in the United States to what is going on in other countries. We just kind of watch it spread and we don't prepare ourselves for that virus potentially coming to the U.S.," she said at the conference. "That happened with Zika, Chikungunya and West Nile."

Experts at the conference told attendees that countries like the U.S. can expect more tropical diseases in the future and should take the appropriate steps to prepare. They blamed global warming as the reason for the drastic expansion of tropical insects and diseases, also citing that the U.S. has lost much of its capacity to track insects. 

Erin Staples, who works as a medical epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, highlighted in the workshop that back in 1927, every U.S. state employed an entomologist to manage and research insect populations and diseases such as malaria.

However, as of now, only 16 state entomologists remain in the entire country.

"We're not getting great information because we haven't maintained our infrastructure," Staples said at the workshop. 

So What Can the U.S. Do Now? 

Public health experts said Singapore is an excellent example of mosquito and insect control. The county has decreased the number of mosquitoes by cleaning up the city and teaching essential practices from a young age, Lee-Ching Ng with the Singapore government’s Environmental Health Institute told attendees. 

"My four-year-old daughter will come home and tell me about vector control because she learned it in kindergarten,” she said. 

Additionally, Singapore has expensive and extensive surveillance systems that track dengue cases by neighborhood, providing alerts to people via phones when cases are high. Singapore residents can also be fined or jailed for harboring and breeding mosquitos at home. 

"There is a willingness to [take action in Singapore,] and they've done it and it works," Peter Daszak, president of the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance said at the workshop.  

However, due to social norms that approach may find itself difficult to implement in the U.S. because of “pushback after COVID against all forms of intervention to people's personal freedom," he said.

Health experts also shared that vaccines and designing cities to make them mosquito-proof could also work.