- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - West
Nile virus spread to three new states over the weekend and has now infected
88 people and killed four of them, U.S. health officials said on Monday.
-
- But, officials said the virus had not been detected west
of a line running roughly from Winnipeg to Houston in south Texas.
-
- In Canada, the disease was detected in southern Ontario
last summer and health officials acknowledged there was only a remote possibility
that migratory birds will have spread it as far west as British Columbia.
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- Describing an outbreak that has taken firm hold in the
United States and is spreading more quickly than expected, the U.S. Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention said more suspected cases are being
checked out in several states.
-
- "A total of 88 cases ... have been reported -- 58
in Louisiana, 22 in Mississippi and eight in Texas," CDC head Dr.
Julie Gerberding told reporters in a telephone briefing.
-
- "Thirty-four states have recognized West Nile virus
in mosquitoes or birds and those states primarily are on the East Coast
of the United States," Gerberding added. South Dakota, Minnesota and
West Virginia all reported cases in birds or mosquitoes for the first time
this week.
-
- Texas reported two more cases on Monday, bringing its
total to 10, and Louisiana health officials were expecting to report 20
more cases later in the day but were working to confirm some cases.
-
- "This is only the beginning," Dr. Raoult Ratard,
an epidemiologist for the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals,
said Friday.
-
- "We have more cases already this year than we have
had in any of the three previous years, so this will obviously be a peak
year," Dr. Jim Hughes, head of infectious diseases at the CDC, told
the briefing.
-
- "Given that we are early in the transmission season
we are concerned that we will see more cases."
-
- West Nile was first reported in the United States in
1999 and health officials say they will probably never know how it got
carried across the Atlantic from Africa, the Middle East and southern Europe,
where it is common.
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- It normally infects birds, but mosquitoes become infected
when they feed on birds and can then carry it to people.
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- A few of the people who become infected develop flu-like
symptoms such as fever and muscle aches, and a small percentage of these
can develop encephalitis or meningitis -- inflammations of the brain and
spinal cord. These can turn deadly, especially in the elderly.
-
- The four deaths so far this year have been in Louisiana
and three were in patients over 70, who often have less-than-robust immune
systems. The fourth victim was 58, according to the Louisiana health department.
-
- Gerberding said the first patient became ill in June,
a month sooner than in the past three years.
-
- "We are a little concerned because the cases are
appearing a bit earlier in the year than they have in the past and there
is a suggestion that some of the people with encephalitis syndrome are
a bit younger than people in previous years," she said.
-
- Hughes said it was not surprising the virus was showing
up earlier in the Southeast, where mosquitoes breed and bite year-round.
-
- Gerberding and other CDC officials said people should
protect themselves from mosquito bites by covering up with clothing, using
mosquito repellents and cleaning up standing water. Mosquitoes can breed
in a bottle cap, puddles in a pool cover, children's toys or a blocked
rain gutter.
-
- Gerberding also said while more cases are expected, of
those infected, only one in five will develop disease symptoms, such as
a fever, and only one in 150 will develop serious complications.
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