he llo and welcome to this special episode of the belmont journal i'm mike riley your host and we have brian far less who is the superintendent of the east middlesex mosquito control project one of eleven such projects in massachusetts as well as wesley chan who is the director of belmont's health department so welcome to the show yes thank you and we're here to talk about west nile virus and what kind of a  threat it represents to the community and what people can do to mitigate their chances of catching the disease so i guess my st question is what do we know about the prevalence of west nile and belmont so west nile has been the ball in massachusetts every year since two thousand and one it was st introduced to the united states in one thousand nine hundred and ninety nine then it was it was actually introduced in massachusetts in two thousand and it's been and our district every year since two thousand and one so it's been around how st of all in terms of the problems you know what do we know about you know what percentage of mosquitoes  type of mosquitoes might carry it because like you know i do yard work i go for walks i get mosquito bites and and so a lot of people do so what what you know what is the risk so the mosquitoes that  that tend to bite you when you're out on your walks and doing yard work barbecues sports games they're primarily mammal biting the scioto so that's not the mosquitoes species that carry us now virus ok i see the primary is primarily a bird biter so they don't like to bite mammals when they do and they have west nile virus and they can transmit the disease so it doesn't happen a lot there and a lot of human cases  every there are no darn a lot of human cases it's the rare chance that one that it's carrying west nile virus but it's human and disease can be transmitted you should always try to avoid bites that we even though it is rare  so is that the kind of thing where you know we have us particular species of mosquito that prefers birds you know let's just say that you know there there are enough birds in the area while the mosquitoes are out there they're looking at other things to bite because they're hungry a human comes along that's where the risk of of west nile actually sort of begins or comes from can't yeah they're not aggressive so i think it's when it's late at night when you're sitting on your ports and they're also there and they can come in and sneak a blood meal ok and then how serious an illness is as west nile  eighty percent of people don't know they have it they they don't they never develop symptoms so so that's actually interesting so so for example you know one of my mosquito bites could have given me west nile and  lived in somerville late at night on the day and i you know sometimes i developed a low cold in the middle of the summer who knows all right so  if if i get bitten by a mosquito that carries west nile this doesn't automatically mean that i'll get sick coral have any symptoms do i potentially become someone that can can transmitted to someone else if you know that mosquito that bit me goes on to you know i'm sorry if a mosquito that's not caring west nile bites me and then goes off and bite somebody else no aren't so so so most people who get west nile probably won't even know that they have it and and and and yet they're there they're there are there is some small percentage of people who if they do get it will have deeper problems do we know can we say anything about you know who those people are for example or are they the elderly i mean immunocompromised people definitely get both of those yeah ok people over fifty tend to develop into developed severe illness so and people with auto immune deficiencies for sure so you know like i said before that eighty percent of the people don't usually know they have it and so twenty percent of the people do develop symptoms i still have headache you could have vomiting and then one percent of those people can develop west nile who develop symptoms those those symptoms can can arrange across sort of a broad spectrum right so from from things that are you know relatively not serious to things that are quite serious for example you know think you should always try to avoid bites ok well so so what can we do what can we do well maybe you might want to answer this one to avoid  getting bitten by mosquitoes and cantering west nile yes it's if you're one of the higher risk populations that brian outlined if you really tried to avoid activity during high miskito hours that generally is between dusk and dawn but you just just very quickly does that mean that these mosquitoes are not active at night well  they tend to be more active in the evening when it's cooler ok so if you have to be out there what you want to do is you want to cover up so wear long pants socks long sleeve shirts if you're able to weather permitting  and then you want to use e t a approved insect repellents ok those are some things you can you can do on a personal level on a neighborhood level what you want to do is you don't want to go out into your yard and make sure you don't have any containers of stagnant water sitting around so that could be you know planters recycling bins trashed and even even old tires ok gather water if you see that you want to make sure you dump that out at least on a weekly basis to help prevent breeding of mosquitoes so there are things that we can do within for example our own yards to minimize you know the  risk of having mosquitoes about but is there also anything that that that we're doing as is part of what the health department does well as or or brian as part of what the what  mosquito project does to to sort of from a public sector perspective to try to reduce numbers of mosquitoes that are so easy middlesex miskito control every summer we hire a seasonal crew and we send them out with a large aside a couple different kinds of our aside and then they treat all of the catch basins in belmont so they ride a bicycle around the streets and that gets roadside storm drains they throw something at the market with a build out of pain so we can keep track the larger ponds things like that are are those are are are those things that are treated or need to be treated we visit those areas to the species that we're talking about they tend dump like westside once a week you can modified trash bins and recycle bins by drilling holes in them so they don't hold water you can remove things you never use a lot of toys and things like that you maybe stop using them but they're still around the yard so those are some good things to do fix your screens and make sure they fit tightly in the frame is there ever any type of active spring that takes place either here in belmont or in any of the other communities that the that you're belmont we don't do adult siding we do adult deciding and some of the other cities and towns that were that are in our destroy wes is there anything that the health department does to try to track numbers of cases people that that  might have west nile or think they might have sure so so west nile is something that's reportable to the state i see and so if you go to your doctor they report it to massey ph and then where were informed of any active cases that may be in belmont the tricky thing with west nile like brian mentioned earlier is that most people don't exhibit symptoms right so it's really hard to know how many people are actually affected by it it's only when the symptoms become severe that you know they go to their doctor and then were informed as a result so i can share with you to date belmont has no active cases of west nile virus but at the same time we definitely do have mosquitoes in belmont that are carrying west nile is that right we trap yeah so we put out traps specific to this species and they come in we kind of imitate the breathing water that they like we soak oakley's and some water thirty gallons of water like seven hundred oakley's and then for one week and then we put that in a tub with a box on top of the tub with a fan in a collection container so we put that zero overnight pick it up in the morning and then we take those mosquitoes speciate then and then send that species to the state lab in the state lab tests for west nile virus ok and and so so we definitely do have west nile florida and perhaps southern texas is that a type of illness that that might ever pose a risk for for folks here in massachusetts and even here in belmont we currently don't have that species that's  disease it's the eighty's a jip dies so that as you know is found that southern florida southern texas southern california maybe southern alabama some of this southern parts of the southern states and our country  d i don't think we'll see that species in massachusetts for a very long well thank you so much for for enlightening us and and and talking with us about mosquitoes west nile and and of course these other diseases and so my important takeaway is that people should make sure that there are no standing sources of water within within their their yards and around them and when they go out they should cover up and an exercise care use deet products insecticides if they can and that will help mitigate their risk but but west nile is a comparatively rare illness and and we can go about enjoying the rest of our summer it was here that you saw too much risk right all right well thank you so much for being on the show and maybe we'll talk