West Nile virus found in second crow in Boston area

BOSTON (Reuters) -- Health and municipal officials prepared Friday to start a campaign of pesticide spraying after the discovery of a second crow infected with the West Nile virus confirmed the presence in Massachusetts of the potentially lethal virus.

Health officials revealed late Thursday that a dead crow found in the western Boston suburb of Hopkinton was infected with West Nile. It was the second time this week that a dead bird was found to be carrying the virus.

Officials Wednesday said a dead crow in the Boston neighborhood of Jamaica Plain was carrying the virus.

A 12-year-old boy hospitalized with encephalitis was being tested for West Nile, but so far no human cases of the illness have been found in Massachusetts.

Tests have so far failed to find the virus, which killed seven people in New York last year, in mosquitoes. People get West Nile after being bitten by mosquitoes who have preyed on birds carrying it.

Massachusetts is the northernmost point the virus has been found. So far this year, the virus has been discovered in mosquitoes or birds in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

Massachusetts Department of Health Spokeswoman Roseanne Pawelec said that no statewide campaign of pesticide spraying was yet agreed, but the city of Boston plans to begin spraying in the Jamaica Plain, Back Bay and Franklin Park areas.

Further spraying measures were to be discussed Friday with state and regional mosquito control officials, Pawelec said. She added that the Health Department was in contact with local municipal officials on the issue.

"We are working with the local communities. The Centers for Disease Control recommends targeted ground spraying within a two-mile radius of where evidence of the virus is found," she said.

The town of Hopkinton is also discussing spraying, local newspapers said, and a decision is expected in a day or so.

The discovery of the two birds some 30 to 40 miles apart means West Nile has more than likely widely penetrated the state, Pawelec said.

"It means West Nile virus is definitely here," she said. "After finding the crow in Jamaica Plain, we would have been extremely surprised if we had not found evidence in other parts of the state."

But she said the discovery of the infected crows, and the lack of confirmed human cases, could give health officials the chance to get a jump on the virus with mosquito control measures and public health awareness efforts.

West Nile virus, named for the region in Uganda where it first appeared in 1937, had never been detected in the Western Hemisphere until it affected the New York region in 1999.

Copyright 2000 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Background, West Nile Virus, CDC Division of Vector-Borne Infectious Diseases (DVBID)
The Massachusetts Department of Public Health

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