This year's first documented case of the West Nile virus has been reported in Southern Nevada. The Southern Nevada Health District said that the patient is an adult male over 50 years old who has a critical neuroinvasive form of the disease.
Devin Raman from that SNHD said that, "August is generally when we get human cases [of the West Nile virus]. We have found West Nile in mosquitoes all across the valley so it's possible for us to continue getting more cases." This disease is spread when a person gets bitten by an infected mosquito that has acquired the virus from infected birds that carry the virus. Raman has issued a warning to the public, urging them to employ means to avoid being bitten by mosquitoes during their prime feeding hours, which are typically from dusk till dawn.
The West Nile virus is not a communicable disease that can passed on from person-to-person. In fact, most of the time, the symptoms of the virus are very mild that some patients will be asymptomatic. Minor symptoms of the disease include headache, fever, body aches, nausea and vomiting, rashes on the skin of the back, chest, and stomach, or swollen lymph glands. However, there have also been cases where the virus has caused severe illness in patients and have resulted to death.
Officials from the Southern Nevada Health District have conducted a inspection of mosquito populations across the state to be able to monitor the known breeding grounds of the infected mosquitoes. They have also been tracking the level of virulence that these mosquito populations have. Based on the data they have gathered, that SNHD issued a State-wide notice of the ZIP Codes where positive pools of mosquitoes that carry the West Nile virus have been identified. These are 89014, 89120, 89123, 89131, 89134, 89143, 89144, 89145, and 89146.
