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7.27.2000
Mosquito
virus found
in Boston
 The West Nile virus, which killed seven people in New York City last summer, has turned up in a dead bird.
By JUSTIN POPE
Associated Press
BOSTON
-- The potentially deadly West Nile virus has been found in Massachusetts for the first time -- detected in a dead crow in a city park, health officials said yesterday.
The virus was detected in the bird, found Saturday near Willow Pond in Boston's Jamaica Plain neighborhood by a Boston Parks Department employee. The bird was turned over to a state laboratory, which confirmed it had died from damage to its nervous system caused by the virus.
An outbreak of the West Nile virus in New York City killed seven people last summer, the first time the virus was detected in North America. The virus has since been found in New Jersey, Connecticut and Maryland.
This year, no human cases have been found in New York, where an extensive program to combat the virus is under way. But it continues to show up in birds and insects, and has spread north.
In Rhode Island, state and local officials have continued an aggressive campaign against possible virus-carrying mosquitoes.
Early last month, officials began sprinkling half-teaspoons of larvicide into catch basins across the state in the attempt to precent mosquitoes from reaching adulthood.
Since then, health officials have taken several samples of the mosquito population in the state but no sign of the virus has been discovered.
Ralph Timperi, director of the Massachusetts State Laboratory Institute, said that mosquitoes in Southeastern Massachusetts are tested heavily for West Nile virus, primarily out of concern for Eastern equine encephalitis.
"As far as we know, it hasn't appeared in that area yet," he said yesterday.
Timperi said that a virus such as West Nile typically will jump from area to area, rather than slowly spread from one adjacent county to the next. That means it would not be unusual for the disease, which first showed up in the New York City area, to be present in Boston without being in Southeastern Massachusetts, he said.
Boston officials said they would begin spraying pesticides on public land to kill mosquitoes, which can transfer the virus, and would urge the public to take precautions to avoid exposure to mosquitos -- including using insect repellant and removing standing water, where bugs can collect.
State officials also pledged to redouble a statewide effort to monitor for the virus.
But they cautioned against overreaction, saying the discovery was expected and pointing out there have been no reported cases of the virus in humans in Massachusetts, or even in mosquitoes.
The disease is fatal in only a small minority of people who contract it. The West Nile virus can cause encephalitis, a dangerous swelling of the brain which can be deadly.
Most who contract it experience flu-like symptoms and never realize they have been exposed to the virus.
More severe infections can cause tremors, convulsions and sometimes death. About 7 percent of those sick enough to be hospitalized for the virus die from it, according to the state public health department.
It wasn't clear whether the crow had picked up the disease outside of Massachusetts and flown here, or picked up the disease locally, said Timperi.
Crows can fly up to 200 miles, and he confirmed this is the farthest the virus has been found in the U.S. from its epicenter in Queens, New York.
In New York, where extensive efforts to combat the virus are under way, there have been no cases detected among humans this year, though birds and insects have tested positive.
Dr. Alfred De Maria, director of the state Public Health Department's bureau of communicable diseases, said he expected there would eventually be human cases in Massachusetts.
"Where it has turned up, it's stayed," De Maria said, adding that scientists simply don't know enough about the virus to determine whether it would find Massachusetts' climate hospitable in the long run.
With Journal staff reports
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