Hillsborough Dengue Cases Reach 259 as State Workers Go Door to Door in Five Tampa Neighborhoods

Hillsborough County has now recorded 259 locally acquired dengue cases this year, nearly nine of every 10 in Florida, as state health workers and City of Tampa employees go door to door in the Tampa neighborhoods where infections have been reported. The Florida Department of Health's latest weekly arbovirus report, covering Sept. 27 through Oct. 3, counts 296 locally acquired cases statewide in 2026, up 44 in a week, in what experts describe as the largest local dengue outbreak in the United States mainland since the 1930s.

Hillsborough's health officer says the outbreak has not peaked. "You can't spray your way out of this," Dr. Carla Fry, administrator of the Florida Department of Health in Hillsborough County, told county commissioners last week, according to FOX 13, as she urged residents to empty anything holding standing water.

The latest state numbers

Hillsborough added 36 cases in the newest state report. Four of them were assigned to August based on when symptoms began and 32 to September, FOX 13 reported, a reminder that lab confirmation and reporting lag behind infections. Statewide, cases with onset in July number 21, in August 154 and in September 121, according to the state report.

The outbreak is concentrated in Tampa Bay but has reached eight counties. The table below shows each county's locally acquired total for 2026 and how many of its cases have been identified as dengue serotype 2, the strain driving the Tampa outbreak, according to the Department of Health's Week 39 report.

Pinellas rose from 13 to 20 cases in the latest report, while Pasco and Polk were unchanged, FOX 13 reported. The state has also logged 20 dengue-positive mosquito pools this year, 19 of them in Hillsborough. No new positive pools were reported in the latest week, but county mosquito officials cautioned that does not mean transmission has stopped.

Florida separately counts 262 travel-associated dengue cases this year, 160 of them in Miami-Dade, and the report lists Cuba as the country of exposure for 215 of them. Officials say the true number of local infections is higher than the count because many infected people have no symptoms, WUSF reported.

Workers knock on doors in five Tampa neighborhoods

On Friday, Oct. 9, City of Tampa employees and Department of Health workers visited homes in Southeast Seminole Heights, North Hyde Park, West Tampa, Forest Hills and Sulphur Springs from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., sharing information about dengue symptoms, avoiding mosquito bites and eliminating standing water, according to FOX 13. The neighborhoods were chosen because cases were reported there; officials have not said whether they have the city's highest concentration of infections.

Susan Wenrick, Tampa's neighborhood enhancement director, said city employees are inspecting properties street by street for containers that collect rainwater. Over three months, Tampa crews have removed 23 tons of illegally dumped tires, monitored 85 locations and issued two citations, FOX 13 reported.

The Aedes aegypti mosquito that spreads most dengue breeds in small containers around homes, such as buckets, flowerpots, toys, pet dishes, bird baths, clogged gutters, tires and pool covers. Fry said at an Oct. 6 briefing that the epidemic curve has not dipped and that cases keep arriving at a steady pace. "It's safe to assume that any mosquito you encounter could be a mosquito that is carrying dengue," she said, according to WUSF.

Emergency orders and the cost of the response

Hillsborough has extended its local state of emergency through Oct. 15, and Pinellas and Pasco have declared their own. Hillsborough has spent $4.1 million on mosquito management, and a new purchase order is expected to push projected costs above $6 million, FOX 13 reported. Commissioners considered retroactive approval of $848,349 for three emergency mosquito control purchases; the county is paying for the response from disaster emergency reserves and may receive some state reimbursement.

Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco are among seven counties under a state mosquito-borne illness alert, the higher of the state's two warning levels, along with Alachua, Duval, Miami-Dade and Orange. Brevard, Broward, Holmes, Leon, Manatee, Martin, Palm Beach, Polk and Walton are under an advisory.

A death and a historic outbreak

The Department of Health confirmed Florida's first dengue death of 2026 on Sept. 18. The Tampa Bay Times reported that the victim was an 80-year-old Tampa woman who died Sept. 4 after being bitten near her South Tampa home, the region's first dengue-related death in about a century, according to WUSF.

Florida's previous high for locally acquired cases was nearly 200 in 2023, the Associated Press reported, a total this year's outbreak has already passed. Beth McGraw, a Penn State biology professor, said in a report published by FOX 13 that the outbreak is the largest local transmission the United States has seen since the 1930s, and attributed it to a long, wet summer that created ideal breeding conditions, mosquitoes' growing resistance to commercial insecticides and warming that is expanding the insects' range. Locally acquired cases have also been recorded this year in California and Texas, according to the same report.

Florida has seen local outbreaks before. Key West's 2009-2010 outbreak produced the first dengue cases acquired in the continental U.S. outside the Texas-Mexico border since 1945, according to the AP. University of Florida associate professor Michael von Fricken told the AP that he expects local outbreaks to become "somewhat the new normal." Nationally, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had counted nearly 1,500 locally acquired cases this year as of mid-September, most of them in Puerto Rico.

Symptoms and protection

Dengue symptoms often resemble the flu: high fever, headache, severe muscle and joint pain and sometimes a rash, lasting about 10 days. Severe cases can cause bleeding, shock and death. FOX 13's report noted there is currently no vaccine available to prevent dengue fever.

Health officials recommend that residents check yards after rain and dump any container holding water, use an EPA-registered repellent containing DEET, picaridin, IR3535, oil of lemon eucalyptus, para-menthane-diol or 2-undecanone, and wear loose long sleeves and long pants outdoors. Because a mosquito picks up the virus by biting an infected person and passes it on with a later bite, people who feel sick are urged to avoid further bites and see a doctor.

What's next

The Department of Health publishes its arbovirus surveillance report weekly, and the next update will show whether Hillsborough's steady pace of new cases is finally slowing. Hillsborough officials will decide whether to extend the local emergency again before it expires Oct. 15. Spraying and inspections continue, but Fry's message to commissioners was that the outcome depends on residents removing breeding sites around their homes, the same message carried door to door in Tampa on Friday.