In a tragic turn of events, a seven-year-old girl from Alabama succumbed to a rare and deadly virus contracted from a mosquito bite.

The virus, known as Eastern Equine Encephalitis (EEE), leads to life-threatening brain swelling and has a fatality rate of up to 30 percent in humans. Alarmingly, this rate skyrockets to a staggering 95 percent in horses.

The young girl, whose identity remains undisclosed, marks the first reported death linked to EEE in Alabama this year. This incident is the second case statewide, with another case detected in Spanish Fort, an Alabama city on the Gulf Coast.

The virus was also found in horses in New York this year, although no human cases have been reported there.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that EEE is a rare disease, with only about 11 cases reported annually in the US.

However, the severity of the disease cannot be understated. The virus is transmitted to mosquitoes when they bite birds, which carry the virus but show no symptoms. These infected mosquitoes then transmit the virus to humans through their bites.

Symptoms of EEE begin to appear four to ten days after contracting the virus. Initial symptoms include a sudden onset of a headache, high fever, chills, and vomiting.

In severe cases, EEE can progress to disorientation, seizures, encephalitis — inflammation of the brain — and even coma. There are no vaccines or cures for the disease, leaving doctors to rely on a variety of treatments to manage symptoms and aid patients.

The death of the young girl was announced by Alabama’s Department of Public Health, which stated that the infection had occurred over the past few weeks. The second EEE patient was also infected around the same time and lived within Spanish Fort.

In response to these alarming cases, authorities in Spanish Fort have taken action by spraying insecticides in an attempt to kill mosquitoes that could be carrying the virus.

Mayor Mike McMillan confirmed the town was already spraying areas once a week to kill mosquitoes. However, he cautioned against more frequent spraying, fearing insects could develop resistance, which would ‘defeat the purpose’.

Complicating the efforts to eradicate the mosquitoes is the uncertainty surrounding which species of the insect is carrying the infection.

To address this, traps have been placed to catch mosquitoes for testing. Mayor McMillan stated, “We are adjacent to a swamp, the Delta. There are a lot of different breeds of mosquitos. We are doing all we can do until we get a determination of the species.”

This tragic incident serves as a stark reminder of the dangers posed by mosquito-borne diseases.