7-year-old Marshfield boy diagnosed with EEE

MARSHFIELD (FOX 25 / MyFoxBoston.com) - A 7-year-old boy from Marshfield has been diagnosed with EEE. He is the seventh human case of EEE in Massachusetts.

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health said the boy was never hospitalized and is home recovering from the illness, which is carried by mosquitoes.

The child is the second in the town to contract Eastern equine encephalitis this year, according to the town's Board of Health.

As a result of the EEE cases, the town has raised the EEE threat level to "critical." The town has also enacted a ban asking residents to stay indoors from 6 p.m. until dawn. No outdoor group activities, including sports, are allowed until the first frost.

Aerial spraying is not an option with temperatures dropping below 50 degrees overnight.

"This is all the communities. It's the surrounding communities. We still don't know and we will never know if either the gentleman or the young boy contracted the virus within this town," Mark McDonald, Vice Chairman of the Marshfield Board of Health, told FOX 25.

The names of the infected have not been released due to patient privacy laws.

The DPH has also confirmed two more cases of West Nile virus in residents of Suffolk and Hampden counties. There have been 19 cases of West Nile in Massachusetts so far this year and one fatality from the disease.

Last weekend, a 63-year-old Amesbury woman became the second fatality of the EEE virus in the state. A 79-year-old Westborough man died of the disease in August.

Cox Media Group