How can a person get SLE?
You can only get SLE from the bite of any infected mosquito. It is not transmitted from person to person or animal to person. Only a few species of mosquitoes in a given area are capable of transmitting SLE. Mosquitoes pick up the virus from the blood of wild birds that are carrying the disease. The birds themselves are not sick. The virus incubates and multiplies in the mosquito’s body and eventually migrates to the mosquito’s salivary glands. This process takes about two weeks. In Florida and Charlotte county, the mosquito that is most often responsible for SLE transmission is Culex nigripalpus, a fresh and stagnant water breeder.
