Virus spreading westward

By STEPHEN SIFF
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- When warm weather comes, a search for the potentially deadly West Nile virus will begin here amid the hum of mosquito wings.
"I think it is going to be, unfortunately, just a matter of time before we see it here," said Neil Altman, Youngstown health commissioner.
"It is probably inevitable," said Matthew Stefanak, the Mahoning County health commissioner. "Whether or not it translates into the kind of outbreak we saw along the Long Island Sound, I don't know."
The virus, spread through the saliva of several common types of mosquito, splashed down in New York in 1999, infecting 62 people. Seven of them died.
Since then, the tide of infected mosquitoes has rippled around the Long Island Sound, into New England and some Mid-Atlantic states. The virus moved north through New York state last year, then hopped west across the bottom of Lake Erie. There were 17 more confirmed human infections, and one 82-year-old man died.
In November, West Nile was found in mosquitoes in two ponds near Erie, Pa., health officials say.
Elderly targets: While the West Nile virus can be fatal, mild infections are more common, says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
The disease is most dangerous to the elderly. The seven people killed by the virus in New York and Long Island in 1999 were all older than 75. Historically, the virus kills between 3 percent and 15 percent of those infected, the CDC says.
"The West Nile virus is moving across the country as the crow flies -- literally," said Jay Carey, an Ohio Department of Health spokesman.
Crows and blue jays are the virus's favorite hosts. There is no evidence that people catch the disease from birds, infected animals or people, but animals appear to be the primary means for the disease to spread, experts say.
Since the Erie mosquitoes were discovered, Ohio has become the new front line in the virus's western expansion.
Discussions planned: In April, the Ohio health department and other agencies will announce a statewide initiative to monitor for the incursion of West Nile-bearing mosquitoes. In addition, county health officials will meet in Columbus this week to discuss the anti-virus plan, Stefanak said.
Health officials in several local counties say they already send the carcasses of mysteriously deceased crows and blue jays to a laboratory for testing. Beginning this summer, those efforts will likely be supplemented by regular testing of mosquitoes lured into traps and pulled from breeding ponds in each of Ohio's 88 counties, Carey said.
"It is hard to say what it is going to cost until you know what you are going to do," he said.
Large-scale efforts to kill mosquitoes, either by spraying or putting anti-larva poison in the ponds in which they breed, will be considered only after cases of West Nile-infected mosquitoes are confirmed here, he said.
Ohio finds itself in a similar situation as Pennsylvania did last year, when dead birds carrying the virus were found in the Philadelphia region. Over the summer, Pennsylvania officials launched a $9.8 million West Nile surveillance effort, starting in the eastern part of the state and moving west, said Richard McGarvey, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Health.
Measures included grants to county agencies to collect mosquitoes for testing; an educational drive to persuade people to remove standing water where mosquitoes breed; and posting "surveillance chickens," live bait for virus-carrying mosquitoes, in promising spots along the Pennsylvania-New York border, McGarvey said.
By the end of the bug season, dead birds had been discovered in 10 Pennsylvania counties, and infected mosquitoes in 13. None of the surveillance chickens came down with the disease, McGarvey said.
Grant provided: Mosquito monitoring in Lawrence and Mercer counties didn't start until midsummer, officials said. In Lawrence County, the Penn State Cooperative Extension office took control of the effort with a $22,000 grant from the state Department of Environmental Protection.
To spend the money, the extension office took on an extra employee for the summer, who drew water samples from mosquito ponds and collected mosquitoes from traps several times a week. In Mercer County, a Conservation District employee took on these responsibilities, officials said.
Even though Lawrence County didn't spend all the grant last year, this year it has been encouraged to apply for more -- about $70,000 more, said Janice Alberico, extension office director. The extra money is for pesticide programs against mosquitoes and their larva.
"We don't anticipate doing it at this point, but we have to be ready in case it needs to be done," she said. "It is sort of like an emergency type of thing."