DORAL, Fla. – There’s some good news on the mosquito front.
John-Paul Mutebi, the director of Miami-Dade County’s Mosquito Control Division, told Local 10 News, “The numbers are not that high.”
“It is an average season,” he said. “It started low, then it exploded. Now, we’ve gone back to the low level.”
There’s also not-so-good news, though.
“When it comes to disease-carrying, this year is not the best because there’s been a lot of activity,” Mutebi said.
Particularly with dengue fever, Mutebi said the chances are really high that South Florida may see more local cases.
He said he and his team are working to avoid an outbreak.
“The thing we do mostly is monitor mosquito populations because there are thresholds below which transmission cannot occur,” Mutebi said.
Local 10 News saw some of that work Friday afternoon.
Mosquitos collected from traps across the county are separated, logged to see what species they are and where they’re clustered.
There are more than 50 species of mosquito in Miami-Dade County, mostly just the annoying ones, but about half a dozen are annoying and dangerous disease spreaders.
That’s why the mosquito spraying is just as relentless as the rains seem to be these days — to suppress the population “to those levels where they cannot initiate or sustain transmission of the disease,” Mutebi said.
It’s all to make sure the next bite is just a bite and nothing more.