Thousands of travelers to the Caribbean and nearby regions are coming home with an unwanted souvenir: a mosquito-borne virus that recently settled there.
The virus, called chikungunya (chih-kihn-GOON’-yuh), causes severe, often disabling joint pain, and few U.S. doctors are prepared to recognize its signs.
At one New York City hospital, a woman arrived in such agony she had to be admitted just to control her pain. “Thinks she has chicken virus??” the mystified staff wrote on the medical chart after interviewing the patient.
Since it spread from Asia and Africa in late 2013, chikungunya has infected a million people in the Caribbean, Latin America and parts of South America and Mexico. Actress Lindsay Lohan recently said she got it while in French Polynesia.
In the U.S. alone, more than 2,300 travelers since last May have brought home the virus, which has nothing to do with chickens. About a dozen people have gotten it from mosquito bites in Florida.