Steve Quayle News Alerts

August 7, 2003
By DANIEL YEE, Associated Press Writer

ATLANTA - The number of West Nile virus cases has tripled since last week and will likely top last year's record total, a U.S. health official said Thursday in the latest warning of the mosquito-borne disease.

"The numbers are starting to change very, very quickly," said Dr. Julie Gerberding, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "That is very concerning."

State health officials report seven elderly people have died from the virus. Four of the deaths were reported by health officials in Colorado, the hardest-hit state.

Nationwide, the CDC said at least 164 people in 16 states are infected, an explosion of the virus in just a week. That doesn't include 39 new cases in Colorado, which the CDC had not verified.

A week ago, 59 people nationwide had the virus. Health officials had expected the disease to spread this year to all corners of the country, invading Western states previously unscathed. But they appeared somewhat surprised at its speed.

The new numbers compare with 112 cases in four states for this date last year.

"It indicates we are starting the epidemic with more cases than last year," the CDC director said. She warned of "a great number of infected people."

Last year, 4,156 people caught the virus, and 284 died. The United States also suffered the biggest reported outbreak of West Nile encephalitis in the world in 2002.

West Nile virus rarely kills, but about 1 in 150 people who get it will develop its potentially deadly encephalitis or meningitis. Most often, it affects the elderly. Of its seven victims this year, the youngest was 68.

Why four of those occurred in Colorado, which reports 111 cases, is somewhat a mystery to health officials. Some experts blame the outbreak on a wet June and very hot July, which they say provided the perfect summer for mosquitoes.

"I can't predict what will happen in Colorado, nor can I completely explain why it is happening," Gerberding said.

Last year, that state had about a dozen cases. Four states — Arizona, Utah, Nevada and Oregon — had no signs of the disease in man or animal.

"If it can increase that dramatically in Colorado, it has the potential to do so in Arizona," said Craig Levy of the Arizona Department of Health Services. "That certainly makes us very nervous."

Until Colorado's first death a week ago, the virus had never killed anyone west of the states of Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska and North Dakota.

The CDC is urging people in the 16 states where the virus has appeared to use mosquito repellent, cover arms and legs with clothing and avoid early morning and evening hours when mosquitoes are most active.

Those states are Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota and Texas.

Since West Nile first entered this country through New York in 1999, health officials have tried everything — mosquito spraying and other control efforts, prevention messages and disease detection systems.

But there's no way to prevent the virus from spreading and there's no way to predict which areas it will strike hardest, said Dr. Sue Montgomery of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Last year, Louisiana had more than 300 cases and 25 deaths from the virus. They did "everything ... according to the book and we had a large epidemic," recalls Dr. Raoult Ratard, state epidemiologist for the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals.

"It's like a viral hurricane."

Most people who are infected with the virus won't get sick. The CDC says about a fifth of those will develop a fever, headache, body aches and sometimes a rash and swollen lymph glands.

Symptoms for West Nile encephalitis or meningitis include headache, high fever, neck stiffness, disorientation and sometimes paralysis.

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