AMERICANALMANAC (Ken Jacobs) - New York confirms first case of Bourbon virus, a tick-borne illness with no cure
A Long Island father of three spent five days in the hospital and waited five years for a diagnosis after contracting a rare tick-borne virus that has no treatment, no commercial test, and has already killed two Americans. Michael Larkin, 67, of Suffolk County, New York, became the state's first confirmed case of Bourbon virus […] The post New York confirms first case of Bourbon virus, a tick-borne illness with no cure appeared first on American Almanac .
A Long Island father of three spent five days in the hospital and waited five years for a diagnosis after contracting a rare tick-borne virus that has no treatment, no commercial test, and has already killed two Americans. Michael Larkin, 67, of Suffolk County, New York, became the state's first confirmed case of Bourbon virus after researchers at Stony Brook University identified the infection in April 2026, roughly five years after two lone star ticks bit him while he worked in his own yard. The diagnosis came only after a year-long antibody trial, and it raises a question public health officials should have been asking sooner: how many other cases across the Northeast are going undetected? Bourbon virus was first identified in 2014 in…Open