Child's Eye Swells Shut From Mosquito Bite

Floodwater Mosquitoes Are More Than A Nuisance For Four-Year-Old

FORT BEND COUNTY, Texas – The pesky outbreak of mosquitoes sent a little girl to an emergency room.

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Janice Yug is hesitant to let her 4-year-old daughter out of the house after a mosquito bite swelled her eye shut.

Jessica Ortega had to stay home from school for two days after Yug said she had a bad reaction to a mosquito bite.

"I noticed she had a bump on her eyelid and at first I thought somebody hit her," Yug said.

She took her daughter to the emergency room on Sunday when the eye got worse.

"It started getting bigger to the point where she couldn't see," she said.

Doctors told Janice her daughter had been bitten by a mosquito.

The mosquitoes invading the Houston area recently aren't your typical bugs -- they're Floodwater mosquitoes. They're bigger, more aggressive biters and they hatched along the coast a few days ago because of the rainfall a few weeks ago.

"They're big mosquitoes. it's not like little mosquitoes," said Yug.

The coastal areas are hardest hit, which is why Brazoria, Galveston and Fort Bend counties are spraying to control them.

"We're spraying everywhere, trying to get the whole county covered," said Fort Bend County mosquito control director, Weldon Sheard. "Normally we get maybe 100 to 200 in a trap. Today, there's more like 5 to 10,000 maybe even 15,000 per trap."

Sheard said every day the situation with the Floodwater mosquitoes gets better and they typically only live a couple weeks.

"As soon as we know they're coming, we start spraying." he said.

Crews will be doing extra spraying for mosquitoes Wednesday in Missouri City and West University Place. Spraying starts at 8 p.m. in Missouri City and from 10 p.m. until 5 a.m. in West U.

A cold front on Thursday afternoon will help curb the mosquito population, meteorologists said.


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