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The Brookings City Mosquito Crew collects the traps and takes them to SDSU, where undergraduates Haileselassie Tefera and Priscilla Simon Heliso classify them by species and then send West Nile Virus-carrying Culex tarsalis to the lab. Public Health Department of South Dakota. for the virus. Credit: South Dakota State University
A reliable way to predict disease risk and communities involved in controlling mosquito populations help South Dakotans to become familiar with West Nile virus. This did not happen by chance.
"This is the vision of the South Dakota Department of Health that brought together all stakeholders 15 years ago," said Michael Hildreth, mosquito specialist at the University of South Dakota, a professor in the Department of Biology and microbiology of the College of Natural Sciences. Hildreth acknowledged that state epidemiologist Lon Kightlinger, now retired, had made a difference and that the state legislature had funded mosquito surveillance and control.
In 2008, Hildreth began working with Michael Wimberly, then Senior Scientist at the SDSU Center for Excellence in Geospatial Sciences, who began developing a model to predict the risk of West Nile virus using environmental data from of satellites. The model also incorporates mosquito surveillance data and the number of human cases of West Nile virus. This research was funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and NASA.
The West Nile Optimized Prediction Model has now been submitted to the Department of Health and Joshua Clayton, who became an epidemiologist last November. Clayton earned his BS in Biology and his Master's and Doctorate in Epidemiology from the University of Michigan.
Strengthen communities
"This project has moved from basic research to empowering communities that are now able to fight West Nile virus," said Hildreth. Cities have largely supported mosquito collection, separating West Nile virus-carrying species and sending them to the Security Division. Public health laboratory to determine if they are positive for the virus. Sioux Falls and Aberdeen are now performing their own virus testing.
Weekly updates on West Nile virus are available to the public and municipal officials on the Mosquito Information System (MIS) website, at mosquito.sdstate.edu, with the support of the Department of Development. Department of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a grant from NASA's Program for Public Health and Air Quality Applied to Applied Sciences. In the future, the results of the prediction will be available on the S.D. The Ministry of Health website and mosquito abundance data will remain on the GIS website.
Predict the risk of viruses
"The forecast model assumes at the beginning of each season that it will be an average year," said Hildreth. Weather and environmental data collected using satellite Earth imagery data push this estimate to a higher or lower level. Wimberly and his team have found associations between West Nile virus and temperature, precipitation and humidity.
"At the beginning of the season, the potential for error is quite high, but as weather data comes in, it becomes clearer," continued Hildreth. "Once we start seeing the mosquito data, it tightens the prediction."
West Nile virus is native to the bird population but is transmitted to humans by the mosquito Culex tarsalis, he explained. When the mosquito bites an infected bird, the virus must incubate in the mosquito before it can be transmitted to humans. Community mosquito surveillance teams work with the Ministry of Health to determine when and how many mosquito pools are positive for the virus. These data are added to NASA's environmental data to establish risk predictions for West Nile virus.
According to Brookings City Mosquito Control Officer Josh McClain, the two-man Brookings City Mosquito Surveillance Team is starting to trap mosquitoes in mid-May and ends in September. However, postdoctoral fellow Justin Davis, who has been helping to develop the model for three years, said the mosquito surveillance schedule can be shortened from mid-June to mid-August without affecting model accuracy. "This will help communities reduce the costs of trapping and analyzing mosquitoes," he said.
"This model helps to inform the public of the level of risk assuming that no preventative action is taken," Clayton said. "The heart of history is translating research into something that protects public health."
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