From Medical Daily
May 11, 2019
Residents of South Florida may soon see small unmanned aerial vehicles flying over their communities. The Florida Keys Mosquito Control District plans to launch a new project that aims to utilize drones to stop the spread of potentially harmful mosquitoes.
Officials said the organization will spend the entire summer to spray or distribute larvicide over salt marshes and other remote areas using the drones. The project will mainly target the Aedes aegypti mosquito species, which is known for carrying deadly diseases, like zika and dengue fever.
Florida Keys hopes the project will eliminate the breeding grounds of the mosquitoes and reduce the population of such insects. Officials also said the high-tech effort will help the local government save a large amount of money, Futurism reported.
The drones will seek remote pools of standing water, a task previously assigned to large, manned helicopters, WLRN has learned.
“In order to dispatch a helicopter to treat those very small sites, it’s very expensive for the district,” Andrea Leal, executive director of the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District, said. Each drone could carry up to seven or eight pounds of larvicide.