West Nile Hits Hard Around Dallas, With Fear of Its Spread

The following is an excerpt from an article in 

The New York Times
Friday, August 17, 2012

West Nile Hits Hard Around Dallas, With Fear of Its Spread

By MANNY FERNANDEZ and DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

DALLAS — An outbreak of West Nile virus has engulfed Dallas County, with nearly 200 cases of human infection and 10 deaths, leading the mayor of Dallas to declare a state of emergency and to authorize the first aerial spraying of a pesticide in the city since 1966.

The high number of infections and deaths from the mosquito-borne disease marks the nation’s worst outbreak of West Nile in a year that has already logged a record number of cases across the country. The virus has become endemic in the United States since the first outbreak in 1999.

An official with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the Dallas-area outbreak was probably a harbinger of a larger spread of the virus into other parts of the country. In Cook County, Ill., which includes Chicago, human cases of infection rose steadily this week, from 5 on Monday to 8 on Wednesday to 10 on Thursday, though no deaths had been reported, the authorities said.

Texas officials say the statewide death toll so far is 17, the most West Nile-related fatalities of any state.

In a report, the C.D.C. said that as of Tuesday, 693 cases of infection had been reported nationwide. Louisiana had six deaths, according to the report, and no other state had more than one.

“With this huge outbreak in Texas, the jury is still out on what’s going to happen with the rest of the country,” said the official, Dr. Lyle R. Petersen, director of the C.D.C.’s Division of Vector-borne Infectious Diseases. “But in Chicago, we’ve already observed high numbers of West Nile virus-infected mosquitoes. This is looking like a large regional event. We don’t know if the number of cases is going to drastically increase, but we do expect more cases.”

And yet, as local and state officials have stepped up their efforts to fight West Nile in the Dallas area, there has been a kind of backlash, with many residents growing more concerned about the aerial spraying than the virus itself.

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