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Virginia Teens Diagnosed With Malaria
9-5-2

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Virginia health officials said on Thursday they were investigating two reported cases of malaria in Loudoun County involving two teens who contracted the disease without traveling overseas.
 
The teenagers live in the same suburban area west of Washington and have no recent history of travel outside of the United States, leading officials to suspect that infected mosquitoes passed on parasites picked up from a visitor to the county.
 
"I would say most likely that somebody was in the community for a finite period of time who was a visitor from a malaria endemic region," Virginia state epidemiologist, Dr. John Marr told reporters at a news conference.
 
Humans get malaria from the bite of an infected mosquito.
 
The Virginia cases involve a 15-year-old boy who began feeling ill on Aug. 12 and a 19-year-old woman who became ill on Aug. 20, health officials said.
 
"The day that I went into the hospital I had a temperature of 105.8 and that was an emergency, so my mom took me into the hospital. And after about a few hours in the emergency room they diagnosed me with malaria," Jonathan Braden, 15, told local television.
 
The young woman, who was not identified, was treated on an out-patient basis and both patients were doing well, the health department said.
 
In a precautionary move, the county launched a campaign to cut down on mosquitoes through the spreading of larvicide and was considering spraying to eradicate adult mosquitoes, the health department said.
 
"It may take a week or two, or more after someone's been infected to start showing symptoms so we can't rule out ... that another case will show up," said Dr. David Goodfriend, Director of the Loudoun County Health Department. "What we want to make sure of is that we don't get any new infections starting from this point on."
 
Malaria occurs in over 100 countries and territories. Most cases in the United States are in immigrants and travelers returning from malaria-risk areas while a few cases of malaria are transmitted by locally infected mosquitoes, health officials said.
 
 
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