"Climate change is driving an explosion in dengue cases. Studying that connection is about to get much harder."
"Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, issued an urgent alert about dengue fever, a painful and sometimes deadly mosquito-borne illness common in tropical and subtropical parts of the world. Some 3,500 travelers from the United States contracted dengue abroad in 2024, according to the CDC, an 84 percent increase over 2023. “This trend is expected to continue,” the agency said, noting that Florida, California, and New York, in that order, are likely to see the biggest surges this year.
On Thursday, the United Kingdom Health Security Agency put out a similar warning, noting that there were 900 cases of travel-related dengue in the U.K. in 2024, almost 300 more infections than the preceding year. The two reports relayed a similar array of statistics about dengue, its symptoms, and rising caseloads. But the U.K. Health Security Agency included a crucial piece of information that the CDC omitted: It noted why cases are breaking records. “The rise is driven by climate change, rising temperatures, and flooding,” it said.
In the past, the CDC has readily acknowledged the role climate change plays in the transmission of dengue fever — but the political conditions that influence scientific research and federal public health communications in the U.S. have undergone seismic shifts in the months since President Donald Trump took office. The new administration has purged federal agency websites of mentions of equity and climate change and sought to dismantle the scientific infrastructure that agencies like the CDC use to understand and respond to a range of health risks — including those posed by global warming."
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