Four Massachusetts towns — Douglas, Oxford, Sutton and Webster — have enacted a voluntary evening lockdown in an attempt to curb the spread of a potentially deadly mosquito-borne disease.
The decision comes after the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) confirmed the first human case of Eastern equine encephalitis (EEE) since 2020 in Worcester County.
On Wednesday, the Oxford Board of Health voted to support the recommendation for people to remain indoors after 6:00 p.m., effective immediately, through Sept. 30, according to a public health advisory shared with Fox News Digital.
Starting on Oct. 1, the recommendation is to remain indoors after 5:00 p.m. until the first hard frost.
The period from dusk through dawn is considered “peak mosquito hours,” the notice stated.
The advisory designates the four communities as “critical-risk.”
“It is the Board of Health’s responsibility to protect the public health, and we take EEE very seriously, and we are strongly encouraging residents to follow these recommendations due to the severity of EEE and the fact that it is in our community,” a spokesperson for the town of Oxford said in an email to Fox News Digital.
