During the U.S. Virgin Islands' first dengue outbreak in about a decade, doctors waited one to two months for lab results because no local testing existed and every sample had to be shipped off the islands. The finding comes from a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published Oct. 15 in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
Once the territory began running dengue tests at its own public health laboratory in October 2024, results came back in less than a week. The outbreak, which ran from January 2024 to June 2025, included 263 confirmed cases and the territory's first confirmed dengue-related death since 2005.
