(July 23, 2004) -- Just days after news that West Nile Virus (WNV) has claimed the life of a 57-year old OC man, making him the first Californian to die from the mosquito-borne virus, the CA Dept. of Health reports five more human cases from San Bernardino (3) and Riverside (2) Counties, bringing this year's human cases to July 23 in southern CA to 40, broken down as follows: San Bernardino County (23), Riverside County (8), Los Angeles County (8) and Orange County (1).
Of the 40 cases to date, 19 are classified as West Nile fever, 18 are classified as West Nile neuroinvasive disease (encephalitis or meningitis) and 3 are of unknown status.
Eight new CA counties have detected WNV in dead birds : Butte (1), Kings (1), Mendocino (1), Sacramento (4), San Diego (1), San Joaquin (1), Santa Clara (1), and Tulare (1); thus bringing the yearly total to 980.
A total of 94 mosquito pools (groups of trapped mosquitoes, "pooled" and tested collectively) tested positive for WNV in the past week from the following Counties: Los Angeles (30), San Bernardino (23), Riverside (15), Orange (14), Imperial (6), Kern (3), Fresno (2), and Stanislaus (1) counties. The mosquitoes from Kern, Fresno, and Stanislaus counties represent the first positive mosquito pools from these counties.
We zoom in on southern CA below. The purple asterisks show WNV-infected mosquitoes reported July 23 for the preceding week. Black balls indicate previous positive mosquito pools. (Gray balls are monitoring sites that haven't shown positive mosquitoes...yet).
