Chicago spraying mosquitos to combat West Nile
Date: 09-Sep-02
Country: USA
Eighteen trucks beginning at dusk on Sunday will begin traversing Chicago streets and alleys and where city health workers have identified clusters of human West Nile cases.
The city health department said crews from a private firm will spray an insecticide called Anvil over the course of two nights. The city said residents should stay indoors and close their windows while spraying is under way.
The Illinois Department of Public Health last week reported seven new nonfatal human cases of West Nile, all from suburbs surrounding Chicago. There have been 49 cases within the city.
West Nile, transmitted through mosquito bites, has been blamed for at least 43 deaths in 14 U.S. states this year. Illinois has reported the most human cases, with 224, and the second-most fatalities, with nine, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Louisiana has had 10 deaths.
Trucks last sprayed for mosquitoes in Chicago in 1975 following the outbreak of another mosquito-borne illness, St. Louis encephalitis, a spokesman for the Chicago Department of Public Health said.
West Nile is common in Africa and Asia but did not appear in the United States until 1999, when an outbreak in New York killed seven people.
This year's outbreak began in southern states such as Louisiana and Mississippi and has been slowly migrating to the north and west, with California reporting its first suspected case last week.
