"We panic": a long and hot summer in Virginia: a record for West Nile virus | Health and Medicine

CHESAPEAKE

Biologist Lisa Wagenbrenner took a bag of mosquitoes in the tackle box. Underneath, a foul water tank had attracted tiny insects – 58 mosquitoes common to the brown house.

These have already had their blood meal. They had come to lay eggs.

A fan inside the box swept them away so that Wagenbrenner could take them back to his Chesapeake lab. There, they would be frozen, identified, crushed in tiny tubes and tested for West Nile virus.

Throughout Virginia, similar scenes took place in the spring, during the hottest summer months and now in the fall. And what they discover is scary: there were 38 human cases of West Nile on October 5, a sharp rise from the previous record of 29, according to the state health department. This number is expected to increase with the end of the mosquito season on October 31, experts said.

Two of these cases resulted in deaths, making 2018 potentially the first year in which the state has experienced more than one death due to the virus since arriving in 2002.

Six of the 38 were in South Hampton Roads, three in Norfolk, one in Virginia Beach and two in Chesapeake.

"We've never had so many," Wagenbrenner said Wednesday morning Wednesday to Wednesday as she drove a pickup truck from one site to another. "We panic."

Although death and severe neurological symptoms are rare, West Nile virus can still result in long-term hospital stays and derail someone's life. Municipalities try to protect mosquito populations through spraying, trapping and testing, but they are self-reliant. The state code assigns responsibility for mosquito control to localities. And some spend more than others.

"Due to a mosquito, my father will not be able to walk me down the aisle at my wedding in April," said Andrea Karr, a Virginia Beach resident whose father, Ronald, was 69 years old. years old, has been hospitalized ever since. August 27 near his home in Maryland.

"Because of a mosquito, my father could stay bedridden all his life," she said. "It's crazy that such a small insect can cause so much pain."

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Mosquitoes Wagenbrenner and his other trap team members were added to the 199,665 they trapped this season.

This is a typical number of a given year, about 100 trapping sites.

She works for the Chesapeake Mosquito Control Board, a $ 4.5 million program with 39 employees. The workers lure the mosquitoes into traps filled with liquid carbon dioxide that mimics the gas emitted by the creatures that insects like to sting. Biologists team up with field technicians to find out where mosquitoes breed, where people start to get infected and where to spray insecticides.

One cent of every $ 100 of the estimated value of a home in Chesapeake goes to commission, so a $ 300,000 homeowner pays $ 30 a year.

The program is unique in that it acts as its own entity rather than being integrated into a public works department like Virginia Beach or the Norfolk Department of Health.

The budget for mosquito control in Norfolk is about $ 740,000 and the Virginia Beach budget is just over $ 2 million.

Chesapeake's biggest budget chunks go to reducing sources – such as maintaining drainage spots where mosquitoes like to lay eggs – as well as spraying. Other towns in Hampton Roads perform similar tasks.

The Chesapeake Commission this year conducted 963 tests for equine encephalitis in West and East Nile, another virus transmitted by mosquitoes that can be fatal to horses. Of these tests, 20 were positive for West Nile – a 100% increase over last year, said Dreda Symonds, director of the commission.

In addition, mosquitoes were infected this year with West Nile virus at a rate about 3.25 times higher than last year. This means that the increase in the number of mosquitoes infected with West Nile virus is due to a higher infection rate, not just more tests.

The rise of West Nile can be attributed to a particularly hot summer that lasted until September, which Symonds noted in a recent report: average daily temperatures were 7 degrees above the norm.

"Often, our worst seasons have been our driest and hottest seasons," said David Gaines, a public health entomologist with the Virginia Department of Health.

At lower temperatures, about 75 degrees, it takes about a month – the entire lifespan of some species of mosquitoes – for the virus to completely invade the insect and its salivary glands. But from age 85, this time frame has been drastically reduced to about three days, Gaines said.

Mosquitoes catch the virus from already infected birds and then pass it on to humans.

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If you have infected 100 people with West Nile virus, about 80% have no symptoms. Maybe a little bad, but mostly nothing to say.

The remaining 20% ​​would have symptoms such as fever, muscle aches, possibly a rash.

One percent of these people would present the most serious symptom of West Nile virus: an invasion of a person's neurological system, said Dr. Nancy Khardori, head of the infectious diseases department at Eastern Virginia Medical School.

It can cause various problems ranging from respiratory problems to acute flaccid paralysis.

The question is why most people have no symptoms.

"Nobody knows why," Khardori said. This confusion makes another concern all the more worrying: West Nile currently has no cure and no vaccine has been developed to cure it. Khardori said research is going on behind the scenes and takes time.

The father of Andrea Karr can be counted among this thin percentage of people who have severe symptoms.

He was taken to a Maryland hospital on August 27, near the place where they grew up and where he still lives.

Ronald Karr had fever, nausea and confusion. Once he got up at his house, walked up to the living room and went back to bed without realizing that he had never left. He was diagnosed with West Nile nearly two weeks later, said his daughter.

During the first two weeks, he could not speak, was unconscious for a while and had to be transferred to an intensive care unit.

"It was traumatic, I had never seen my dad in the hospital before," said Karr, describing his father as the strong and stubborn member of the family who wanted to be the "protector of everything".

Today, she says, her health has improved and he is more alert even if he does not speak much and can not leave his bed.

Before the virus, he had rheumatoid arthritis in his knees and hips. It was difficult for him to get out much and he usually only went to take the dog to the yard or to go shopping.

The virus surprised the whole family, said Andrea Karr.

She hopes that her father's story can inspire others to take the right precautions, such as wearing an insect repellent.

"The West Nile virus can change your life in an instant," she said.