Archives > News Update
Print
E-mail
Comment
Rate
RSS
Share
West Nile recap: Health director briefs council on efforts to combat disease
By Conner Hammett, chammett@starlocalnews.com
The Plano City Council got a rundown on the impact of West Nile Virus in the city of Plano and what the environmental health department has been doing to stop its spread at Monday night's preliminary council meeting.
Brian Collins, director of the city's environmental health department, explained that West Nile is usually transmitted by mosquitoes that are infected after biting birds that carry the disease. It was first detected in the United States in 1999 and in Texas in 2002.
"We've had previous dealings with it, but never in the numbers or the frequency that we're seeing currently in the region," he said.
While the disease's second, neuroinvasive form infects only one in 150 people, it is the far more dangerous of the two. Symptoms include high fever, stiff neck, muscle weakness and disorientation. This form of the disease usually lasts several weeks, and some victims experience permanent neurological effects or death.
"People who are older than 60 are generally more susceptible to the disease and the neuroinvasive disease, and an increased risk of developing disease," Collins said. "There is no treatment for West Nile. There is no vaccine and no antiviral that is known to work on it."
The city's health department began monitoring mosquito activity in early May, Collins said. Early samples showed higher-than-normal mosquito populations, tipping the staff off to the fact that West Nile was likely to land in Plano this year.
The first confirmation of West Nile virus is mosquitoes was reported in June, at which time the city notified residents in the neighborhood to take proper precautions and began applying larvicide to bodies of water that were likely mosquito breeding grounds.
"We intensified the larviciding in areas that we knew not only had West Nile virus but areas that we have known from history that were producers of large populations of mosquitoes," Collins said. "In addition, if we get a positive hit for the West Nile mosquitoes, we started doing the ... land-based fogging, using an ultra-low-volume, trailer-mounted fogger with a chemical called Anvil 2+2."
The city has emphasized self-protection through fliers, mailers, and web and social media alerts. Residents are advised to stay indoors during dusk and dawn, dress in long-sleeved shirts and long pants while outside, use insect repellent containing DEET and drain any standing water on their property that may become a hotbed for mosquito activity.
Further confirmed West Nile samples appeared in early July, at which time the department began routine ground spraying and larviciding in areas known to produce large amounts of mosquitoes throughout the city.
"The programmatic focus stayed on education, trying to get citizens to take personal responsibility for protecting themselves and their families, and on larviciding," Collins said, "and I have to admit the citizens of the city Plano have been awesome with regard to their response and assuming the responsibility ... This, I think has been one of the major reasons why our numbers look a lot better than many of the other cities in the region."
In a typical year, Collins said, human cases first appear in mid-August and continue through mid-October. Atypically, the city learned of two human cases of the disease in mid-July and had four cases by the end of that month. As of today, the city has learned of 21 human cases of the virus, including one death. Two of the cases were reported in the city's Denton County portion.
As a whole, Collin County has experienced 49 cases and one death as a result of the disease. To illustrate the "stark difference" between the numbers in Collin and other surrounding counties, Collins said Dallas County has experienced 291 human cases of the virus and 12 deaths. Denton County, he said, has seen 119 cases and two deaths, and Tarrant County has seen 231 cases and four deaths.
To give council members an idea of the frequency of the disease, Collins said the virus has statistically affected 1 in every 12,857 Plano residents. The incidence rate of the disease is eight cases per 100,000 residents.
In Collin County, statistics show 5.3 incidents occurring in every 100,000 population sample, with 1 case occurring per 18,927 residents.
"Their numbers are a little bit better than ours, but I think the reason for that is because we're more populated and more urbanized than the rest of the county,"
The city continues to collect mosquito samples for population counts and to evaluate the efficiency of the city's mosquito-control program, Collins said. The city is also surveying to determine whether mosquitoes have developed a resistance to the pesticides that have been sprayed throughout the city.
"Overall, it appears that the program is working very well, and I'd love to be able to say that it's our program that is making that difference but I think the citizen involvement in taking it seriously has been huge," he said, "and my feeling is probably more intuitive than it is scientific, but the numbers for Collin County are very good in comparison to Tarrant, Denton and Dallas."
The following are comments from the readers.
In no way do they represent the view of Starlocalnews.com
In no way do they represent the view of Starlocalnews.com
You must register with a valid email to post comments.
Only your Member ID will be posted with the comments.
Only your Member ID will be posted with the comments.
Registered users sign in here:
Become a Registered User
- Return to: News Update «
- Home «
- Top of Page ^
