New York is joining the states in the Northeast US warning about the eastern equine encephalitis virus after a New Yorker died from the disease.

New York's first person to contract Eastern equine encephalitis -- or EEE -- in almost a decade has died, the governor's office announced Monday as the state declared the virus an "imminent threat to public health.

“While we normally see these mosquitoes in two to three counties each year, this year they have been in 15 counties so far, and scattered all over New York State. This life-threatening mosquito-borne disease has no commercially available human vaccine and must be taken seriously.