Published September 16, 2026. Last updated October 23, 2026. Case figures are current as of the Florida Department of Health arbovirus surveillance report for week 40, covering October 4 to 10, 2026, and change weekly.
Yes, dengue is being transmitted by local mosquitoes in Florida this year, and Palm Beach County has recorded one locally acquired case. As of the week ending October 10, 2026, the Florida Department of Health reports 368 locally acquired dengue cases statewide, across eight counties. The large majority, 310 of them, are in Hillsborough County. Palm Beach County still has one.
What matters here
The Florida Department of Health reports 368 locally acquired dengue cases across eight counties in 2026, the largest dengue outbreak the state has recorded in decades. Hillsborough County accounts for 310 of them.
Palm Beach County has recorded a single locally acquired case, unchanged since September. One case in a county of roughly 1.5 million people is not an outbreak.
Palm Beach and Martin counties are both under a state mosquito-borne illness advisory as of October 10, 2026.
The mosquito that carries dengue breeds in small containers of water close to houses and bites during the day. This changes what actually protects your household.
The most useful thing you can do this week is empty every container on your property that holds water, and repeat it weekly.
The Florida Department of Health separates dengue cases into two groups, and the difference matters.
Travel-associated cases are people who caught dengue somewhere else, usually the Caribbean or Latin America, and returned to Florida already infected. Those happen every year and do not mean the virus is spreading here.
Locally acquired means the person did not travel. A mosquito in Florida picked up the virus from an infected person and passed it to someone else. That is local transmission, and it is why these numbers get watched closely.
The 368 cases reported by the Florida Department of Health are the locally acquired ones. According to the state's arbovirus surveillance for week 40, those cases sit in eight counties: Hillsborough with 310, Pinellas with 37, Miami-Dade with 9, Orange with 5, Pasco with 4, and one each in Broward, Palm Beach, and Polk.
This is the part most homeowners get wrong, and getting it right changes what you do about it.
The Florida Department of Health identifies Aedes aegypti, and to a lesser degree Aedes albopictus, as the mosquitoes that transmit dengue. These are not the mosquitoes most people picture.
They bite during the day.
Most people associate mosquitoes with dusk and dawn. Aedes aegypti is a daytime biter, most active in the morning and late afternoon. Avoiding the yard at sunset does nothing to avoid this one.
They breed in tiny containers, not ponds.
Canals, retention ponds, and lakes are not where this mosquito comes from. Aedes aegypti breeds in very small volumes of standing water close to houses. A plant saucer, a bottle cap, the folds of a tarp. Health officials have noted that even a teaspoon of water in a toy can hold larvae.
They stay close to home.
This species does not travel far. It tends to live and breed within a short distance of where it hatched, which means the mosquito biting you in your yard almost certainly bred in your yard or a neighbor's.
Here is the honest version, neither inflated nor dismissed.
One locally acquired case in a county of roughly 1.5 million people is not an outbreak. Hillsborough County, on the west coast, is where transmission is established this year, with 310 of the state's 368 cases. Pinellas, immediately next to it, accounts for another 37. Between them, those two counties hold almost every case in Florida.
At the same time, Aedes aegypti is present in Palm Beach County. It is a common urban mosquito across South Florida, and the county has recorded locally acquired dengue in past years. The single case this year confirms the virus can move here, which is a reason for routine prevention rather than alarm.
The reasonable posture is the one public health officials take. Pay attention, remove breeding sites, and do not panic over a single case.
This is the part that has changed since this article first went up. As of October 10, 2026, the Florida Department of Health lists Palm Beach and Martin counties among those under a mosquito-borne illness advisory.
An advisory is not an alert, and neither means an outbreak. It indicates that mosquito-borne disease activity has been detected in the area and that residents should take precautions. In Martin County the activity behind it includes a sentinel chicken that tested positive for St. Louis encephalitis virus, along with West Nile activity. Dengue is not the only virus the state watches for.
What an advisory should change is the consistency of the yard work below, not your plans. The precautions are the same ones that apply in any South Florida summer, which is the argument for having a routine rather than a reaction.
The Florida Department of Health describes dengue symptoms as beginning 3 to 14 days after an infected mosquito bite. Reported symptoms include sudden fever, severe headache, pain behind the eyes, muscle and joint pain, and sometimes nausea, vomiting, or bleeding. Illness typically lasts 4 to 7 days.
The Florida Department of Health also notes that many dengue infections cause no symptoms at all, and that a person can be infected without knowing it.
This article is not medical guidance. If you think you may have dengue, contact a doctor.
Because this mosquito breeds in containers rather than ponds, the job is search and dump, not spraying. You are looking for standing water, and there is more of it than you think.
Walk the property and empty anything holding water. Plant saucers under every pot, indoors and out. Bromeliads, which hold water in the leaf axils and are one of the most overlooked breeding sites in South Florida. Pet water bowls. Kids' toys left in the yard. Tarps and boat covers with any sag. Clogged gutters. The drip pan under the AC unit. Birdbaths. Recycling and trash bins that catch rain. Buckets, wheelbarrows, plant trays, anything that held rainwater after the last storm.
Do it weekly. The mosquito's cycle from egg to biting adult runs roughly a week, so a container emptied today can be producing mosquitoes again by next weekend if it refills. Flushing bromeliads and dumping saucers every seven days breaks that cycle.
For a fuller walkthrough of container breeding and why treatment alone does not solve it, our guide on why mosquitoes keep coming back after treatment covers the same principle in more detail.
Worth being precise about what this does and does not do.
Professional mosquito service reduces the adult mosquito population on a property through barrier treatment of the vegetation where adults rest, and a technician can identify breeding sites you may have missed during an inspection. Our mosquito control service works at the level of your individual property.
What it does not do is prevent disease. No mosquito treatment prevents dengue, protects against infection, or removes risk, and any company claiming otherwise is overstating what the service can do. Area-wide response to local transmission is the job of county mosquito control districts and the Florida Department of Health, not a private service.
The honest framing is that source reduction and adult mosquito control lower how many mosquitoes are around you. That is worth doing on its own terms, and it is separate from any claim about disease.
If you want a second set of eyes on the breeding sites around your home, we inspect the property, identify standing water, and treat the areas where adult mosquitoes rest. Wise House Pest Control offers a free inspection across Palm Beach County, Martin County, and St. Lucie County.
1177 Hypoluxo Rd Suite C-31 Lantana, FL 33462
464 NW Peacock Blvd, Unit 106 Port St Lucie, FL 34986
Yes. As of the surveillance week ending October 10, 2026, the Florida Department of Health reports 368 locally acquired dengue cases in Florida this year, across eight counties. The large majority are in Hillsborough County. These figures change weekly.
Yes. The Florida Department of Health has recorded one locally acquired dengue case in Palm Beach County in 2026, a figure unchanged since September. One case in a county of roughly 1.5 million people is not an outbreak, and almost all of the state’s cases are in Hillsborough and Pinellas counties. Palm Beach County is, however, listed under a state mosquito-borne illness advisory as of October 10, 2026.
