State girds for West Nile virus battle

By WILLIAM HATHAWAY

July 25, 2000 Web posted at: 11:23 AM EDT (1523 GMT)

HARTFORD, Connecticut (The Hartford Courant) -- As state officials prepare to spray pesticides in three Fairfield County towns this week, new information suggests the West Nile virus may be difficult to control.

A spraying planned for Stamford, Darien and New Canaan was delayed Monday due to the threat of rain. The virus was discovered Friday in Connecticut for the first time this year in mosquitoes trapped in Sleepy Hollow Park in Stamford.

Experts say spraying will only slow the spread of the virus.

"Spraying isn't going to make the virus go away,'' said Durland Fish, associate professor of epidemiology and public health at Yale University. "At best, it will reduce the risk somewhat.''

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So far, no one has contracted the exotic virus this year, which last year killed seven elderly people in New York by causing encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain. Reports of the virus being found in dead birds or mosquitoes in New York and New Jersey are on the rise, but health officials are unsure whether that is due to a spread of the virus or increased surveillance.

They agree, however, it is unlikely that the New York metropolitan area will go unscathed.

"A human case could pop up anytime now,'' said Theodore Andreadis, chief entomologist at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station. "It will be just a matter of bad luck.''

On Monday, Connecticut's two U.S. senators held a press conference at the state Capitol in Hartford to urge that the federal government enact an emergency-response plan to deal with West Nile virus.

Sen. Christopher J. Dodd joined Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman in urging that federal funds be made available to coordinate efforts to deal with infectious diseases generally, to stop the spread of West Nile and to conduct more research on the virus.

Lieberman's staff prepared a report that chastised the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for failing to heed the warnings of a Bronx Zoo biologist who last year argued that a growing number of dead birds found in New York might pose a human health threat. The CDC originally misdiagnosed the West Nile outbreak as St. Louis encephalitis.

West Nile experts agreed that human and animal health officials should work together to identify and contain new infectious diseases such as West Nile.

But spraying can do only so much, Fish said. Aside from the difficulty of reaching mosquito populations away from main roads, the diversity of mosquito hosts carrying West Nile virus may make it more difficult to combat.

The recent discovery of West Nile in several Culex restuans mosquitoes brings to four the number of mosquito species known to carry the virus, he noted.

"This indicates there are lots of different mosquitoes involved and we'll probably find more,'' Fish said. "All have different habitats, different host preferences, and [different times] when they feed.''

For instance, the virus was found in Culex pipiens and restuans, common mosquitoes that feed at dusk and tend to prefer feeding on birds rather than people. But it also was found in Westchester County in the Asian import Aedes japonicus, which feeds during the day and on mammals, Andreadis said.

That finding was particularly troubling because laboratory tests have shown japonicus, which has established itself throughout Connecticut in the last few years, is very efficient at transmitting West Nile, Andreadis said.

The virus also has shown up in Aedes vexens, which feeds on humans.

And there are troubling new reports about the virus' effect on some species of birds, the prime movers of the virus. Dead birds have been shown to harbor large amounts of virus, meaning that they may be "amplifying'' the amount of West Nile present in the wild, Andreadis said.

No infected birds have yet been found in Connecticut, but health officials expect that the virus will resume killing birds, particularly crows, as it did during last year's outbreak.

Research conducted at the National Wildlife Health Center has shown that infected crows do not stray far in the four or five days before West Nile kills them. That increases the probability that the virus may be carried by mosquitos in the area in which a dead bird is found.

"It ups the ante of finding a dead crow,'' Andreadis said.

Some researchers have suggested that West Nile had a hard time establishing itself in a temperate climate like Romania after a 1997 outbreak because it is a tropical disease.

That is why it is important to try to prevent West Nile from finding its way to the Southern United States or Central and South America, Fish said.

"That would be a real disaster,'' Fish said.

Fish proposed that agencies expand testing to live birds, which may harbor the virus but not die from it.

The state Department of Environmental Protection has asked residents to eliminate standing water in which mosquitoes breed by cleaning roof gutters, turning over wading pools when not in use and filling in puddles.

New York's Central Park reopens after mosquito spraying

CDC-The West Nile Virus

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