From Medical News Today
November 25, 2019
The EEE virus is carried by mosquitoes — through mosquito bites, it can be transmitted to equines, such as horses or zebras, and to humans.
This virus has been present in the U.S. for centuries, though it has rarely infected people.
However, if it does infect a person and the infection evolves into a severe form of the disease, EEE can be deadly.
Only a handful of these infections in humans had been reported throughout the U.S. each year for the past few years.
According to dataTrusted Source from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), last year there were six reported cases of EEE and five in 2017.
Until this year, the highest annual number of EEE cases in the country over the last decade had been 15, in 2012.
But as of November, this year has seen an upsurge in EEE cases in humans, including fatalities due to the illness. The CDC reportTrusted Source that there have been “36 confirmed cases of [EEE] virus disease […] this year, including 14 deaths.”