Los Angeles Battles Record Typhus Cases as City Prepares to Host 2028 Games
Despite mounting hospitalizations and growing concern over flea-borne typhus, local and state leaders have largely avoided confronting Los Angeles’s worsening sanitation issues head-on.
Back in 2018, I reported that over 100 people in the Los Angeles area had contracted the bacterial disease typhus, and the area’s public health officials began sounding the alarm about the spread of the infectious disease.
At the epicenter of the epidemic were the homeless camps, and the Los Angeles Police Department station nearest to the city’s Skid Row had to battle rats and fleas that spread typhus bacteria as officers attempted to protect themselves from illness.
The city’s problem with typhus was steady news through 2019. Sadly, the problem still has not disappeared.
Los Angeles County is now reporting a record countywide surge in typhus, with 220 confirmed human cases in 2025 and about 90% requiring hospitalization. Furthermore, there are now multiple localized “outbreak zones” besides Skid Row, including in Santa Monica.
Flea-borne typhus is caused by the bacterium Rickettsia typhi. Fleas become infected when they bite infected animals such as rats, stray cats or opossums, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Once infected, the flea spreads the disease to humans when flea feces is rubbed into cuts or scrapes on the skin or the eyes.
The number of typhus cases in the county has increased since 2021, when there were 141 recorded cases, rising to 171 in 2022. There was a slight decrease in 2023 with 124 cases, but the number picked back up in 2024.
Cases have been reported across Los Angeles County, but authorities identified three localized outbreaks in 2025.
The outbreaks occurred in central Los Angeles, Santa Monica and the unincorporated neighborhood of Willowbrook near Compton, according to public health officials.
It must be noted that the number of cases in 2018 and 2019 pales in comparison to those recorded in 2025.
Interestingly, most prevention recommendations have focused on protecting pets.
One bit of good news is that typhus is not transmitted from person to person. Infected fleas tend to live on rats, free roaming cats and possums. If your dog or cat spends a lot of time outdoors and gets exposed, they don’t have to show any signs of illness for you to get sick.
“The fleas can be infected and can live on your pet, even though they’re well, so you can still be at risk of contracting the disease,” said [Los Angeles Department of County Health Medical Epidemiologist Dr. Aiman] Halai.
To protect yourself, health officials suggest you protect your pets, use flea control year round and stay away from stray animals. Don’t handle them or feed them.
“Don’t leave any pet food outside. Make sure the vegetation around our homes is trimmed, making sure there’s no bulky items where these animals can hide or crawl spaces where rodents can live,” said Halai.
Nary a mention has been given to the failures of Gov. Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, LA bureaucrats, and homelessness-focused NGOs to actually address the problem.
Some residents and commentators have pointed to visible street conditions, including encampments and trash accumulation, as contributing factors that sustain flea and rodent populations. County officials have not directly linked the typhus rise to specific policy debates but stressed that prevention starts at the individual and household level.
So, despite mounting hospitalizations and growing concern over flea-borne typhus, local and state leaders have largely avoided confronting Los Angeles’s worsening sanitation issues head-on.
Newsom recently spent $19 million on an ad campaign designed to polish California’s image as vibrant and forward-looking, which is a stark contrast to the grim reality in outbreak zones like Skid Row and Santa Monica.
With Los Angeles poised to welcome the world for the upcoming Olympics, the city faces an uncomfortable test: whether cosmetic messaging can outshine the persistent public health and urban management challenges still festering beneath the surface.
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Comments
why is this a problem ??
its very natural in 3rd world countries/areas
just b/c la is in the usa doesnt mean its not the same atmosphere as a 3rd world country
it is>>>fact not opinion but fact
the culture is not first world
the government lives like kings and queens and the rest its hunger games time
not much different than africa etc
So now L.A. has tropical diseases spread by the lack of basic sanitation. Who could have predicted it?
My card for 2026 has a space for Leprosy.
Be sure to include other little gems of poor sanitation like cholera, dysentery, yellow fever, the Black Death (plague), etc.
Given that Plague has been endemic in the southwest for well over 100 years, I’m quite surprised it hasn’t resurfaced yet.
Gryffon:
Yes, it’s prevalent here in NW Wyoming (but only 3 cases since 1970), where the rats and mice carry fleas that carry the plague. People let their cats and dogs out, who then hunt the little vermin (that’s why we’ve got a cat, and never a mouse in the house) and the fleas jump ship.
If you’re not careful you can get fleas on you from the pets, and that’s how people get infected here. There are an average of 7 cases a year in the US (from 1970 to 2025), but there are sometimes the occasional fatality if it’s not treated soon enough. Here’s the CDC’s website on it:
https://www.cdc.gov/plague/maps-statistics/index.html
Watch for the next major outbreak in Southern KKKalifornia. If it goes pneumonic there’ll be no stopping it in the tent camps clustered in the Big Blue Cities. The rest of the country will have to put up roadblocks to stop the idiots fleeing in panic.
That downvote was a slipped finger. Because you are quite right about what will happen if it goes pneumonia or septicemic.
And look for it to become antibiotic resistant too, since I doubt homeless addicts are great about taking full antibiotic courses.
Nah, I’m too busy writing an IPO for a company that manufactures handbells. (Bluetooth-enabled digital ones, of course, to make them marketable in California.)
Someone should just tell Newsom, Bass, and the rest of the Democrats there that Xi is coming.
THEN they will clean things up.
Imagine, a crap hole run by communist retard that’s overrun with diseases that should have been banished a century ago. Unfortunately, not too hard to believe
Import third-worlders, get third world diseases.
Illegal aliens are spreading it?
Given that Commufornica is rapidly heading for it’s own self imposed dark ages, the Black Plague seems to be apropos….
“One bit of good news is that typhus is not transmitted from person to person.”
Oh, I have absolute confidence in one Protected Class to find a way.
I know what Typhus is, and as an infectious diseases physician, I only see a very few cases of it every year. Hell’s bells, only a few cases every five years! It’s just not that common. It’s easily treatable IF recognized, but if it’s in LA, then it’s a result of extremely bad public health management from the devastation of the fires that were mismanaged, mismanagement of the homeless (the BIGGEST cause!), and mismanagement of public health resources in general. Karen Bass-hole and Gavin Newscum are directly to blame, and nobody else. Their inaction caused this, and if this ends up being like the Bedbug Blitz on Paris in 2024, it will be a catastrophe. I treated over 35 people who attended the 2024 Paris Olympics for various insect-transmitted diseases. Funny how AI engines deny that bedbugs transmit diseases, yet as a PhD microbiologist, I can confirm that they do, indeed, DO.
Typhus and typhoid are different diseases.
Typhoid is transmitted via a fecal-oral route, usually through contaminated water.
Typhus is usually transmitted via a flea or louse vector.
Both are distinctly third-world diseases.
It’s LA and they don’t care…