Hot and humid … now mosquitoes? – NBC 7 San Diego



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It sounds like the plot of an episode ripped from the headlines of “TheTwilight Zone”:

A pandemic strikes, then people lock themselves inside homes and businesses. In Act 2, a heat wave arrives and, with it, power outages. In the final act, too hot to stay indoors, people roam outside, where in the dark, another invisible pest lurks. And the Easter egg on the prowl as the credits roll? Insects attack in daylight too!

Ok, maybe we’re a bit dramatic, but some say there are MOSQUITOES in San Diego this year, and they’re really biting.

“I’m eaten alive,” said Grace Ramos of Mission Hills, where there is a very active thread on NextDoor dedicated to this topic. “It’s worse this year, but it’s been bad for us the past two years.”

While some suspect there is a bumper crop of bugs this year – and fears of an impending spike in West Nile virus cases – the reality is probably more irritating than pestilent.

Sadly, the death of an elderly Los Angeles resident has been attributed this year to West Nile. And, over the weekend, local health officials reported that a 61-year-old hospitalized Alpine man tested positive for West Nile, although he is believed to have contracted the virus in Yuma. , Arizona.

So what is different in 2020 (besides everything)? Vector control, despite the pandemic, is doing everything it normally does to suppress the mosquito population, such as spraying and distributing mosquito-eating fish.

However, Chris Conlan, the supervising vector ecologist in the San Diego County Department of Environmental Health, says the blame for this year’s insect bites may be an invasive mosquito, Aedes aegypti, which was first detected in San Diego County in 2014. While Aedes initially called Africa his home, it has now spread around the world due to his love for people and areas temperate. For the most part, however, the critters have moved away from America’s prettiest city.

“They’ve been on our doorstep for a long time,” Conlan told NBC 7 over the phone. “They’ve been right in our south in Mexico and just in our east in Arizona, so why they suddenly decided to infiltrate San Diego, Los Angeles, and Southern California over the past few years is a bit of a mystery.”

The thing about Aedes is that he likes to feed on people and his larvae can survive in VERY small amounts of water – even “a bottle cap if sprinklers hit it every day,” according to Conlan. So if you have a lot of plants in pots in the backyard with saucers underneath, you have a great breeding ground for Aedes.

“The most important consideration with Aedes is that they breed in small, container-like sources which are commonly found in many backyards, so it is not difficult for them to settle down,” Conlan said. . “It is therefore imperative to check the properties of stagnant water and to eliminate it…. They don’t fly very far – around 300 feet – so eliminating sources in yours and nearby yards can dramatically reduce the problem.

That said, the thing about Aedes, unlike his local counterpart, the Culex mosquito, is that he doesn’t hesitate to make an appearance during the day.
And that may be a factor as to why the bugs may look worse this year.

“They would bite even in the morning and in the middle of the day,” Ramos said. “I’d be sitting at the dining room table and getting bitten.

Don’t be scared, though – okay, have a LITTLE scare: Aedes doesn’t usually transmit West Nile virus, Conlan said. West Nile usually infects a person after a mosquito bites a bird carrying WNV, and since Aedes prefers to bite people, they are less likely to feast on feathered prey and more likely to focus on a carrier of WNV. rocking. And even if Aedes bites a bird, he still can’t infect a human with West Nile.

“Aedes is not such a competent vector, and what I mean by that is that an Aedes mosquito bites an organism that has West Nile, it is not as efficient at transferring this disease to the next thing he bites, ”Conlan said. “The Culex species is better at that.”

So, is this a particularly bad year for Aedes? Maybe, maybe not, says San Diego County Communications Specialist Gig Conaughton: “[We’re] don’t see more Aedes mosquitoes this year than last – however, there is a caveat to that: Aedes mosquitoes are more urban in nature, and Vector Control doesn’t do much mosquito trapping on private property of the people. “

And what about the West Nile?

“It’s far enough into the season that we’re less likely to have a bad year for West Nile,” said Conlan.

Most people who catch West Nile don’t die, of course; However, 2 in 10 people who get it experience fever, fatigue and muscle pain. So far this year, there have been 18 West Nile cases in the state, according to the California Mosquito-borne Virus Surveillance and Response Program, most in Stanislaus County.



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