The case of a Spokane woman earlier suspected of having West Nile virus illustrates how $237,423 in state money has been spent on the disease in recent years.
Most of the effort has gone into monitoring for the virus and tracking down suspected cases.
And, as occurred in the case of the Spokane woman, most of the investigations have not encountered a case of the disease.The testing conducted in the Spokane case “was to look for or rule out West Nile virus,” Donn Moyer, spokesman for the state Health Department, said Monday.
Initial tests indicated the woman had the disease, but a second round of tests, conducted at the state Health Department laboratory in Shoreline, was negative.
“False positives are not unusual with this kind of testing,” Moyer said. “That’s why we do follow-up tests.”
Since 2003, $125,562 in state money was spent on disease investigation, including testing blood samples for the virus, Moyer said.
The federal government provided another $61,237, he said.
Another $111,861 in state money since 2001 has been spent on activities such as testing mosquitoes and checking dead birds for the virus, Moyer said.
Since 1999, the federal government has allocated $468,139 for environmental health monitoring, he added.
The testing has allowed state health officials to determine which types of mosquitoes are most common in each region of the state, Moyer said.
Washington was the only state in the lower 48 that did not have a West Nile case last year. So far, nine Washington residents have had West Nile virus, but all contracted the disease while on trips out of state.
Nationally, 2,539 people last year caught the mosquito-spread virus, and 100 died from it, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Snohomish Health District spent a total of $294,000 in 2003 and 2004 on West Nile, most of it to monitor for mosquitoes and investigate reports of dead birds. It expects to spend $100,000 this year, said Randy Darst, assistant director of environmental health.
“We gathered a lot of information,” Darst said. “This year, we wanted to verify our hot spots.”
The health district has mosquito traps at 25 locations in the county. In previous years, the biggest concentrations of mosquitoes have been found in the Marysville, Everett, Lake Stevens and Snohomish areas.
In 2002, tests showed that 1 dead bird found in Snohomish County had West Nile virus, Darst said. Sixteen birds were tested in 2002, 207 in 2003, and 89 in 2004.
This year, 24 birds have been checked, but none tested positive, Darst said.
The death of large numbers of some types of birds, such as jays and crows, often is the first signal that the virus has moved into an area.
About one in 150 people infected with West Nile virus develops severe symptoms, such as high fever, headache, neck stiffness, coma, tremors, convulsions, muscle weakness, vision loss, numbness and paralysis, according to the CDC. Neurological problems can be permanent.
Up to 20 percent of people infected with the virus have a fever, headache, body aches, nausea, vomiting and sometimes swollen lymph glands or a skin rash on the chest, abdomen and back.
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