A 7-month-old news article out of Australia is making the rounds on American social media accounts in the wake of several reports of flesh-eating bacteria in visitors to Florida.
The Australian Broadcasting Company article from December 2018 said researchers were warning people about mosquitoes spreading a bacteria that can cause a flesh-eating infection. Scientists said the bacterium Mycobacterium ulcerans is called the Daintree ulcer and the Buruli ulcer is a close relative of tuberculosis and leprosy.
A Newsweek article from September 2017 also said Australia was facing a flesh-eating disease epidemic. Medical professionals said the Buruli ulcer begins as swelling in the limbs and morphs into an open wound.
The sores are usually painless and can be treated with strong antibiotics, but in some cases, they grow big enough to require surgery.
This bacteria is completely different from the bacteria we're seeing in some cases of flesh-eating infection out of Florida. That bacteria, vibrio vulnificus, is often called "flesh-eating bacteria."
Hillsborough County Mosquito Control experts say as far as mosquitos spreading or transmitting vibrio, "this is not accurate to our knowledge. This is nothing we have ever heard or that we track."
Joseph M Conlon, a retired U.S. Navy entomologist with the American Mosquito Control Association, said he's very surprised if this was possible or has ever happened.
Conlon said the vibrio surviving in the mosquito's gut from larvae phase to adult and then getting into salivary glands would be incredibly difficult.
Conlon said it's more likely you get a mosquito bite, go into the water and vibrio gets in your body through the break in the skin from the bite.