On Monday health officials in the Dominican Republic raised an alert for the Mayaro virus, a mosquito-borne illness recently identified in a patient in neighboring Haiti.
The virus's symptoms include chills, malaise, headache, stomach pains and joint pains, and is transmitted by the very same Aedes aegypti mosquito that carries Zika, Dengue, Yellow fever and Chikungunya.
Following a year in which Zika became a household word, the discovery of a new rare virus 600 miles from Miami is cause for concern. University of Florida virologist Dr. John Lednicky, who identified the illness, says it's still too early to say how many other people might be infected, or whether the mosquito-borne virus will make it to Florida or not.
Discovered in Trinidad in 1974, Mayaro is still somewhat of a mystery, and there isn't even good testing for it. The worst outbreak ever recorded occurred in Venezuela in 2000, but the disease has also been detected in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Guyana, and Surinam.