The End Of The Year For West Nile

Now that flu season is approaching, New Yorkers can at least breathe a collective sigh of relief that West Nile season is coming to a close. Recently, the City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) released a summary of the West Nile surveillance and control activities to date for 2003 in which they report that no further larvacide spraying is anticipated this year.
"Weather conditions this season appear to have been ideal for mosquito breeding and West Nile virus," said DOHMH Commissioner Dr. Thomas Frieden. "While the city did much to control the spread of West Nile virus this season, we had a similar number of cases compared to last year. Tragically, there were also six deaths."
Two of those deaths were Queens residents, one a 69-year-old man from Ridgewood and the other a 72-year-old woman from East Elmhurst. To date, Queens has had 11 confirmed cases of the disease formally known as West Nile encephalitis or meningitis, but no cases of the rarer West Nile fever.
There were 31 cases in New York City this year with sixteen of the cases occurring in males and fifteen in females, ranging in age from 8 to 93 years old. The deceased ranged in age from 63 to 93 years of age. The most recent instance of West Nile infection was reported in early October.
This season, 145,527 were tested and 275 mosquito pools (123 in Queens) were found to contain insects carrying the disease compared to only 197 pools found to be infected last year. The increase may have been due to the rainier weather, which may have led to the formation of bodies of standing water that went unnoticed or unreported, even as the number of standing water complaints rose. The numbers are somewhat incongruous, because the city conducted more larvacide and pesticide spraying in 2003 versus 2002.
"As we assess this years activities, we can see that we conducted mosquito control activities in areas with increased virus activity prior to human illness and thus our actions likely prevented many human cases," said Dr. Frieden.
Humans werent the only ones infected. There were 152 cases of infected birds identified by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (52 in Queens) and one case of West Nile infection in a mammal that occurred in the Bronx.
West Nile continued to be a nationwide problem in 2003, with 155 deaths, which is down from 284 deaths in 2002.
The DOHMH has discontinued actively monitoring for human cases of the disease but will continue to request that physicians report any occurrences of unusual illnesses in their patients. This month, the DOHMH began its over-winter monitoring of West Nile, which will include testing of any mosquitoes that survive into the winter.