Voracious Mosquitoes Breed by Gulf

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The New York Sun

The incessant buzz is just beginning.


Breeding in standing water throughout the Gulf Coast, voracious mosquitoes will soon inundate some areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina, landing at a rate of up to 200 a minute on exposed arms and legs.


A few will carry West Nile virus or other diseases, experts say, but most simply will be a maddening nuisance to relief workers and evacuees sleeping outdoors or in damaged homes.


In inland areas, away from the worst storm damage, the problem could be just as bad.


“You have people sitting out on the porch, sitting out in the yard,” the chief entomologist for the Mississippi Department of Health, Jerome Goddard, said. “You can’t stay in the house, because its too hot – the power’s off. … You can’t cover up, because you burn up.”


Friday’s forecast for the Mississippi state capital, Jackson, is 92 and sunny, with 50% humidity.


Mr. Goddard and other entomologists said the storm damage and flooding were so great that a vast increase in the normally high mosquito population seemed inevitable – although the severity would depend on the success of abatement efforts.


Mosquitoes are notorious disease spreaders. The biggest fear is that the West Nile outbreak already active in the Gulf region will worsen. In New Orleans, Mayor C. Ray Nagin is eager to spray the city with chemicals to kill mosquitoes breeding in floodwaters; he has asked the federal government for crop dusters to carry out the plan.


But health officials downplayed the prospect of a rapidly spreading health threat.


“Ecologically, the disease has a fairly fragile cycle,” said Roger Nasci, who heads the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention entomology team assisting state and local authorities along the Gulf Coast.


West Nile transmission requires a relatively narrow range of bird hosts, weather conditions and species of mosquitoes – all of which were disrupted by the storm.


“When 120 miles-per-hour winds come through, everything leaves,” a technical adviser to the American Mosquito Control Association in North Brunswick, N.J., Joe Conlon, said. “We don’t anticipate a spike in West Nile fever.”


The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals reported 19 new cases of West Nile on Wednesday, raising the state’s total this year to 78, including four deaths. All of those cases were detected before Katrina hit, a health department spokeswoman in Baton Rouge, Kristen Meyer, said.


Mississippi reported two new West Nile cases in the last week to the CDC, bringing the state’s total to 23, including one fatality. Alabama also had two new cases, for a total of three, and no deaths, according to the CDC.


Experts doubt they will see an upsurge in other mosquito-transmitted illnesses, such as St. Louis encephalitis, Eastern equine encephalitis, LaCrosse virus, dengue fever, and malaria, because those disease are rare. No human cases of such illnesses have been reported in Louisiana this year. Alabama has seen only two cases of Eastern equine encephalitis, and Mississippi had one case of St. Louis encephalitis and one of LaCrosse.


The New York Sun

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