Dangerous disease ‘old as the plague’ hits record high in California

Health officers are warning residents to take precautions, together with preserving pets updated on flea medicine, after a record variety of flea-borne typhus circumstances had been reported in Los Angeles County over the previous yr.

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health stated 220 flea-borne typhus circumstances had been reported in the county in 2025, the highest on record. The division investigated three outbreaks in 2025, together with one in Santa Monica.

The county well being division’s report signifies that California additionally had the highest number of flea-borne typhus circumstances in the fashionable period at 277. (The California Department of Public Health, whose Jan. 21 report famous that LA County had 165 flea-borne typhus circumstances in 2025, has not confirmed this quantity.) That’s greater than double the quantity from 2016 when counting suspect, possible and confirmed circumstances. Mandatory digital reporting for the disease started in 2011, and the overwhelming majority of circumstances in California are often reported in Los Angeles and Orange counties.

Typhus is a disease attributable to the Rickettsia typhi micro organism and outcomes in fever, chills, headache and a cough, together with a particular noticed rash referred to as a petechial rash. 

The micro organism is unfold when contaminated fleas chunk an individual. As these fleas chunk, they defecate, and when an individual scratches the chunk, flea feces can enter the bloodstream. LA county well being officers stated the fleas can unfold from stray animals, as effectively as from rodents and opossums in the space. 

“Flea-borne typhus can cause serious illness, but it is preventable with simple steps,” Dr. Muntu Davis, who’s the Los Angeles County well being officer, stated in a press release. “With cases at an all-time high and most requiring hospitalization, it’s critical that people take simple steps now, such as routinely using flea control on their pets, avoiding contact with stray animals, and preventing wildlife from living in or around their homes.”

Shannon Bennett, the chief of science and a microbiology curator at the California Academy of Sciences, stated the disease has been round for hundreds of years and is “as old as the plague.” 

“It’s always a little disconcerting to be hit with an old, emerging infectious disease,” she instructed SFGATE, saying she’s involved that folks’s hygiene and dwelling situations might go away them in danger.

Bennett stated a altering local weather with hotter temperatures could assist flea populations improve, which might result in the unfold of typhus. 

“It’ll help drive the flea population up, and it’ll increase their own developmental life cycles,” she stated of hotter climate. She additionally stated that as folks encroach on wildlife areas, there’s extra of an opportunity for these illnesses to unfold from animals to folks.

Typhus might be handled with antibiotics, and deaths are uncommon, accounting for less than 1% of circumstances. But the disease is critical, and LA well being officers famous that 90% of these with the disease find yourself needing to be hospitalized.

Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease knowledgeable at UC San Francisco, defined why the bacterial disease, which peaked in the U.S. in the Forties, might be lethal.

“It’s not only a really high fever,” she stated. “Also, the laboratory abnormalities can be dangerous. You have low clotting factors, low white counts and anemia.”

Gandhi stated a affected person with low clotting elements is susceptible to harmful inside bleeding, together with bleeding from the mind.

“This can make anyone really sick,” Gandhi stated, saying younger wholesome individuals are as in danger as older populations.“The majority of people who used to get infected with Rickettsial were, like, people who hiked in wildlife and were out in nature. Now, we’re getting it from our pets.”