Hillsborough gains additional dengue resources

First here at five, battling dengue fever has become a statewide effort. Tampa Bay remains the epicenter of Florida's outbreak and crews from across the state are in Hillsborough County tonight to help with the spraying efforts. This comes as the total number of cases is expected to rise again. Fox 13's Aaron Mesmer is live in Tampa. Aaron, tell us about today's efforts. Yeah, Haley, at least four helicopters, including three from Lee County and one from here in Hillsborough County spent the morning treating areas where they've had known dengue fever cases. We're told the largest concentration of dengue cases is still along the I-4, I-275 corridor and into Ybor City, but the county has seen cases in 51 of the nearly 60 zip codes in Hillsborough, so this truly is a county-wide effort, and those efforts are ongoing both day and night. The county's also had 19 mosquitoes test positive for dengue so far. Now, finding one has been described by mosquito control experts as the equivalent of finding a needle in a haystack. So finding 19 is a lot, and it's very concerning. The Hillsborough County Mosquito Management spokesperson talked about how their efforts have been successful. We set 40 more out just this last week, and 36 came back with zero mosquitoes in them. So we're seeing the numbers of mosquitoes in the traps drop a ton, but unfortunately, kind of as long as people are infectious, and if you're raising your own mosquitoes we can kill every adult mosquito in the area but if you continue to have that you know larva in your backyard that you're not dumping out the water for as soon as those become adults and bite somebody that's sick now we've got more mosquitoes spreading it. And according to the state's most recent report there have been about 300 dengue cases and that total is expected to increase when the new report comes out on Thursday. So far almost 90 percent of the state's cases have been in Hillsborough County and that includes one death. Mosquito experts, however, say there might be maybe a light at the end of the tunnel coming, whereas they say that we're getting close to the end of mosquito season, Haley. So they're hoping that we're going to start seeing some of these numbers come down in the coming weeks. Yeah, let's hope so. All right. Aaron Mesmer reporting tonight. Aaron, thank you.