One of America’s first domestic malaria patients in two decades has been revealed as a 21-year-old National Guardsman on the Texas-Mexico border.
Christopher Shingler, who was stationed on the Rio Grande near Brownsville, woke up trembling one night in late May, which quickly turned into a fever and vomiting.
Doctors initially dismissed his illness as a viral infection, but when medications did not clear up the disease by early June, he was given further tests.
Mr Shingler had not recently traveled outside of the US, which led doctors not to initially consider another disease like malaria.
But then, to the shock of everyone, swabs revealed that he had been infected with the pathogen. Doctors have since been told to always consider malaria in any patients who come to wards with a fever, even if they have not recently traveled.
Christopher Shingler, who was stationed on the Rio Grande, is one of America’s first malaria patients in two decades. The 21-year-old started to suffer shakes, fever and vomiting in late May because of his infection
There have also been six cases in Florida. Four of these were diagnosed and treated at the Sarasota Memorial Hospital (pictured) with doctors saying patients came in with a fever and dehydration
Mr Shingler said: ‘I would wake up really early in the morning and I would start shaking. It was a lot of just trying my best to make myself eat something, as small as I could, which usually I was unsuccessful.’
Mr Shingler is one of seven malaria cases diagnosed in the US since May and the only one in Texas.
The other six are all in Florida, with local doctors saying these are mostly among homeless people who have suffered dehydration and a fever.
Describing his symptoms to NBC News, Mr Shingler said that he would also struggle to keep down any water that he drank.
The National Guardsman was hospitalized for at least ten days, before being discharged last month. He has made a full recovery.
Mr Shingler is not sure where he caught malaria, but was often on duty at night — when mosquitoes are most active.
‘We were getting torn up by mosquitoes, chiggers, whatever you can think of, you can name,’ he said.
‘We were getting torn up the entire time we were out there, especially that first night.’
Doctors tested him for Covid before diagnosing malaria.
Chiggers, also known as harvest mites or berry bugs, are small red mites that can bite humans.
Mr Shingler was not aware of anyone else in his group had fallen sick with malaria.
Announcing the case in Texas, the state’s department of health said it had been detected in Cameron County — which includes Brownsville — and in an individual who had not recently traveled outside the United States.
There have also been six cases of malaria detected in Florida since May this year — four of which were treated at Sarasota Memorial Hospital.
Dr Manuel Gordillo, an infectious diseases expert at the hospital who helped treat the patients, said they had come to the wards since late May with symptoms including fever and dehydration.
Several were homeless, he said, and had waited to come to hospital until the later stages of infection.
He added: ‘Some of the cases were sort of neglecting the symptoms and they presented way later with other complications.’
Details of the patients’ ages, genders, how long they were in hospital and how they were treated were not given.
The patients included the first to be detected in Florida and the two most recent cases. The other two were diagnosed and treated at other hospitals in the state.
Mr Shingler, pictured above, is not sure where he became infected but said that every night they would be ‘torn apart’ by mosquitoes
The whole of Florida is under a malaria warning, as well as Sarasota County – where cases have been detected – and its neighbor Manatee County
Dr Gordillo added: ‘These cases, native here for Sarasota, we haven’t seen cases that were [local infections]… since the 1950s, which is the time when malaria transmission was eradicated from the United States.
‘We do see malaria in Sarasota a few cases a year, but this is in travelers and not locally acquired.’
Malaria is a disease caused by a parasite spread to humans via the bite of an infected mosquito.
Early warning signs of the disease include fever, chills, headache, muscle aches, fatigue and nausea.
Without treatment, these can progress into complications such as anemia — a low red blood cell count — and organ failure, which can be fatal.
Malaria kills hundreds of thousands of people globally every year, with 619,000 deaths recorded in 2021. With treatment, most cases are not fatal, but should they progress to the severe stage, the disease almost always leads to death.
Dr Manuel Gordillo, from Sarasota Memorial Hospital, treated four of the six malaria patients in Florida
About 2,000 cases of the disease are logged in the US every year, estimates suggest, but these are all linked to travelers that have entered the country.
The last time mosquito born illness occurred in the US was in 2003, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says.
The whole of Florida is under a malaria alert issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on June 26.
Sarasota County, where malaria has been detected, and its neighbor Manatee County, are also under their own malaria alert.
Sarasota-based officials say they have started spraying along coastal areas where mosquitoes are known to live in order to get a handle on the situation.
Residents are being urged to use bug spray, avoid areas with mosquitoes and wear long clothing — especially in the evenings — to avoid infection.
Doctors in the state were also warned at the end of June to consider any fever-stricken patients coming to hospital as a potential malaria case.
The disease is transmitted by mosquitoes, who put it into humans when they suck their blood. Humans cannot pass the disease between each other.
Experts suggest that malaria likely returned to Florida after mosquitoes bit someone returning from abroad who had the infection.
The insects then contracted the disease and transmitted it to other humans when they bit them, triggering local cases.
Malaria was eradicated in the United States in the 1950s after a massive public health program that saw pesticides sprayed from aircraft and potential mosquito breeding sites drained.
But sporadic cases have repeatedly popped up since — although these are generally linked to international travel and have not led to wider transmission.
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