Focus 580; The Emergence of West Nile Virus in New York City and the Surrounding Area

Well this morning in this second our focus will be talking about the West Nile virus. This is a virus that has commonly been found in Africa in West Asia and in the Middle East. It can cause a brain inflammation called encephalitis which can be severe or even fatal. The greatest risk being two people over 50 Until recently this virus the West Nile virus had not been seen in North America. But now it has made an appearance the first cases being seen in New York City in the summer of 1999 it appeared again last year demonstrating that it could overwinter and it does seem to be spreading leading some scientists to predict that within a few years it could be found over most of the United States. This morning we'll be talking with a scientist who was instrumental in identifying this in New York. About a little bit about West Nile but also some of the issues raised and there are some important ones raised by this particular disease and the and what it took to try to figure out what was going on in New York. Our guest is Tracy McNamara. She is a

veterinarian. She works with the Wildlife Conservation Society in the Bronx New York. She's a graduate of Cornell she got her vet med degree there. She is also a visiting assistant professor in pathology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine University in the Bronx and is here visiting the campus to talk a little bit about this West Nile virus and its implications for for veterinary and for public health preparedness This is a talk in the Miller comm series. All of these always open and free to the public we've had a lot of these speakers on here on focus 580 so that folks who couldn't attend the talks can still hear what they have to say so but of course if you're in an around Champaign-Urbana and you're interested in hearing our speaker you can do that she'll be talking at 4 o'clock this afternoon in room one a beer hall on the campus. So you're certainly can stop by but we're happy to have you here and if you have questions you can always call in and ask them. She'll do her best to give an answer. 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 2 2 2 9 4 5 5.

So at any point here you can give us a call all we ask of callers is that people just try to be brief so. We can keep things moving along and include as many callers as possible. Well thank you very much. Well thank you so much for inviting me. Pleased to be here. I guess maybe we should talk a bit about that. What about the mechanics of West not what it is or we're talking about this is a it's a virus that doesn't deed can infect human beings and it involves birds and mosquitoes and horses and other I guess other animals as well. Yeah. Basically since this is the first time this virus has occurred in this hemisphere I think we have to be very cautious about making predictions because when a virus reaches a completely new environment it's difficult to predict what it will or won't do. And everything this virus has done has already come as a surprise. As you said it overwinter it even though everyone had said it would not successfully overwinter to mosquitoes in New York City. Everyone said

we wouldn't see cases in the winter. We did predictions were made based on risk analysis maps that the virus would spread south. And last summer although it did that first it spread north. Up to the Canadian border. And I think the words to live by is if West Nile has taught us anything is it's imperative that everyone in the medical veterinarian public health field continue to challenge their assumptions. And any predictions that are made in the absence of data will most likely be proven wrong. Just the most recent story that I've seen about this was just within the last few days I think it was and the story that I looked at was in The Washington Post that had said that that various people around the country had been looking. They've been trying to see can they find it here this year in 2001 and so far at least as I remember the story said

no no one has found them yet. Now is that is that true or is that where it would we would we also should we also say well one shouldn't get a false sense of security just because we haven't found any yet. Oh absolutely. I actually at first I thought you were they just had a major international conference on West Nile in New York around 10 days ago. And in that meeting perhaps one of them are sobering points that was made was made by the New York State Department of Health who having lived through two summers of West Nile virus last summer in spent a fortune and put tremendous energy into using all of the traditional surveillance methods that one would use for a mosquito borne viral infection. And bottom line is none of them worked. None of them were predictive of human risk. And. This. This summer the the best thing we have to go on is people picking up the phone and calling in and

saying they've seen dead birds. My concern with that is that is an entirely passive system and sort of like one of those in you know mind benders you know if a crow dies in a forest and no one's there to see it no one picks up the phone do you have West Nile virus. It's completely dependent on public participation. Well and one of the things that I understand is that I guess the issue of how it is that this managed the disease managed overwinter is that the particular there's one particular kind of mosquito that's best at transmitting it and it's a kind of a mosquito that during the winter time finds warm places to go and it actually hibernates. So there's no there's no I'm sure that it would be very difficult even if you decided well we're going to go out we're going to try to get rid of all those mosquitoes to find all of the places that those mosquitoes could be over the wintertime. No no one is suggesting that that's even feasible. The point of spraying would be to try and knock down the numbers of adult feeding mosquitoes and lessen human risk.

The thing is the problem with spring is we now know there are at least six species of mosquitoes that are involved and can successfully transmit West Nile virus. They all have very different biologies. They're all active A different times of the day or night. They eat they live in different areas. So how do you target your spraying. When we as of yet still do not know which mosquito serves as a primary vector for transmitting disease to humans. Oh I guess I thought that there was was one species that had been well Culex pipiens that's what everyone was saying however. Culex pipiens is not active in June and in the first summer birds were dying at the end of June and July. People didn't die until August. But in the second summer of West Nile the same thing happened we had active cases in June and that led people to look for different factors. Let me introduce again just real quick here. Our guest Tracy McNamara is head of pathology with the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York City in the Bronx and was very much

involved in identifying the presence of West Nile virus in New York City in the summer of 1999 as we mentioned the beginning of the program this was something that had been seen before and in Africa in West Asia in the Middle East but never in North America until that point. And she's since that time has done has written many papers and done an awful lot of speaking on this subject. And we're really pleased to have her here on the show and questions are welcome. 3 3 3 W I L L toll free 800 1:58 WIO. Let's go back to talk a bit about what happened in that summer of 99. Two things happened that people noticed. But of course that I imagine they would have different kinds of people earlier in that summer. Something was obviously wrong with the birds crows particularly they were obviously seen to be sick although there was no visible signs of of wounds they were. I obviously behaving as though they were not well. Then later that summer you started to see people turning up particularly I guess elderly people turning up in hospitals with these symptoms that

at some point someone said well this kind of looks like encephalitis to us. And I guess that then kind of the beginning they said well we know we have St. Louis and satellite is in this country. We've seen it here in the in the in Illinois in southern Illinois. So that probably is what it is then eventually we get to the point where we figured out no this is this is something we've never seen before. What was it the fact that did you get involved in this because of the birds. Michel Yes yes. And that's the irony of the situation. Crows have been dying since late June early July. They were seen by a small animal veterinary practitioner who then sent those crows up since they were wild birds. They fell under the jurisdiction of the Department of Environmental Conservation which in New York state has jurisdiction over free ranging wildlife. The individual there who is doing analysis. Has no formal training in veterinary pathology and was

basically not coming up with accurate diagnoses when Bird started showing up dead on the grounds of the Queen zoo near our exhibits the curators sent material for that same reason to the DC and again we were waiting for a diagnosis. When they started showing up on the grounds of the Bronx Zoo were always concerned about the possibility of free range and wildlife introducing disease to our captive collections. And I think there is very much a different mindset with free range in wildlife versus captives to wildlife. When you're dealing with endangered species every individual counts 408 crows with no diagnosis is simply not acceptable. So when a few crows started showing up on the grounds of the Bronx Zoo where we have a complete Department of Pathology we launched our own investigation. And what I saw after doing complete post-mortem is crap CS and histo pathology and bacteriology and toxicology. Lead me to believe that

what I was seeing in the crows and satellite as marker died us and what I ultimately saw in the zoo birds was the same and based on my years of experience as a comparative pathologist and the fact that I was in a unique situation I was the only one looking at these crows who had the advantage of also having domestic poultry right on zoo in our children's zoo and they were fine. So if this had been a regular avian virus something that normally kills birds. Well logically it should have been killing the chickens and the turkeys but they were OK so that put the major you know poultry diseases way low on the list. From a logical point of view and when I made the intuitive leap that there might be a connection between the birds and the people who were dying of supposed St.Louis and satellite us according to people in the public health field that was an outlandish suggestion because in the textbooks. All

the known mosquito borne viruses of this hemisphere have co-evolved with birds or even ons and birds are asymptomatic reservoirs. They don't get sick. They don't die. But the fact was the irrefutable fact was I had barrels of dead birds. They were mostly northern and southern hemisphere species of birds and they hadn't suffered this and it did not appear to fit any of the known Veturi diseases. And I have training in foreign animal disease recognition I did a course at Plum Island the foreign animal disease diagnostic lab on Long Island. And it just didn't seem to fit anything and. The reason I was able to say well what if you know let's just put aside the diagnosis of St. Louis for a moment or let's just assume maybe it's a new strain of St. Louis. The reason I was able to do that is because I work in a zoo and

the the area of zoo and wildlife pathology is a very much a frontier because there are so few of us who are doing it in the United States there are only seven zoos in the U.S. with full time pathologists on staff. And so for that reason every single day when I see a dead animal we have to rule out everything that's known. But since we're pioneers we know that we could be seeing something for the very first time. So we are not threatened or intimidated by the unexpected the unknown in fact looking for it is my job definition. And so I was like you know forget what's in the textbooks. All I can tell you is what I'm seeing under the microscope. And when we sent material off to the national venery lab and they isolated the virus. And when they did electron microscopy and could see the viral particles from my birds the fact that they were a given size 40 nanometers diameter was historic that made history. That proved that we

did have a Flavie viral infection. It was killing birds and it could be related to what was going on in people up until that moment no Flavie viral infections have been reported to kill birds. Is this something that you think is going to be in addition to being a threat to human population that for some time to come is this a serious problem for the bird populations of this country. Oh yeah this has been a real veterinarian a wildlife disaster. And the irony is once people realized that the birds in fact did serve a sentinels at the recent meeting I had to point out to those people in public health who said OK we want dead birds because they're the only indication of viral activity. It's like yeah I hate to burst your bubble but you know there are some people like veterinarians and wildlife biologists who don't want dead birds and we're working very hard on a vaccine. And if we have anything to say about it you're not going to have a lot of dead birds. Dropping from the

skies so you know I think you better start looking at another surveillance system. And that just goes to show really that there continues to be a disconnect between the wildlife community the domestic animal veterinary community and the public health community that that is the lesson to be learned from West Nile that's one that we need to bridge. Do you also think that some of those people have made predictions about the continued spread of the disease may be correct that he has given it enough time maybe a couple of years. It's possible that we would see this now over large parts of the country or most of the country. Yeah basically there's nothing to stop it from spreading everywhere this is a new virus looking for a home and everywhere it goes it's going to look for new vectors new reservoir hosts. Someone made a prediction that everywhere it goes it will continue to kill horses birds people and frankly we don't know what else because of

our current surveillance system is so focused given our eliminate amount of funding. There are many research questions out there that remain to be addressed but there's simply nothing we can do about it right now. I'm interested in hearing some more about what the surveillance system what constituted the earth constitutes a surveillance of one of the things that I read about was apparently there were flocks of chickens. Well yes they used to. For that. Yeah. Traditionally especially in this neck of the woods where you have where you've had St. Louis and satellite us chickens are used because they will bleed them every week. And chickens can become infected with St. Louis and satellite as they will mount an antibody response. You can prove that with a blood test and it could be an early indicator that you have you know mosquitoes spreading the virus in that area. The problem was the chickens didn't work in New York City. We don't know if it's because we didn't know where to place those chickens whether the chickens are just really lousy sentinels for West Nile. Maybe we need to be looking at

alternative species like the sparrow and. And those studies are underway. So then what is the best that you can do is be on the lookout for dead birds and then when you find them try to figure out what killed them. Yeah. Yeah absolutely. And the irony is though now that this is probably one of the biggest attempts to go out and do a massive survey on wildlife. But just as when Saint Louis was diagnosed it was because that's all we were looking for. Well now we're doing the exact same thing only now. All we're looking for is West Nile virus. So if they happen to have Eastern Equine Encephalitis or St. Louis and stuff Elias or something else we don't know is out there. We're going to miss it. And my concern is the way this diagnosis was made was based on just good old fashioned pathology where you know a systematic evaluation of every tissue every bird we kept a very open mind and and we didn't put blinders on

whatever this was we were going to figure it out but we didn't assume that we knew what the answer was and we didn't restrict our investigation to a single diagnosis that we were targeting. And we're doing the very same thing now with West Nile again. Our guest this morning Dr. Tracey McNamara she is works with the Wildlife Conservation Society in the Bronx New York. She is a veterinary pathologist an addition she also teaches at. She's visiting assistant professor in pathology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx and is here visiting the campus to talk about this very topic about West Nile virus and what it should mean to us how we should think about this in a public health kind of a way. She's giving a talk in the Miller series that's today 4:00 o'clock this afternoon in a room 180 a beer hall. So if you'd like to hear more about that you can attend and hear if you have questions you can call we have one person here ready to go. Others are welcome in Champaign-Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. We also have toll

free line good anywhere that you can hear us. Rhonda Illinois Indiana anywhere the signal will travel 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. 6 Call or in Urbana line number 1. Hello hello. Yes well I just did and I heard that this virus might also kill horses and I have a few. So I'm interested in learning you know. How and of what happened with it this time. Oh yes it does kill horses and it has a pretty high fatality rate and if you want information on that if you have access to a computer the best website would be if you went to the USDA website USDA dot gov. They will have an entire West Nile Virus section and complete information on what we know about this virus to date and horses. It causes neurologic

signs. Some horses recover but some don't. At this stage we still have no treatment no vaccine no cure. A vaccine an experimental vaccine is underway and you know that may be available it'll certainly be available before we have one for humans. So that's so that's the good news. Well hey when you're talking about resources you know that you know the private funding is made available to do that kind of research. But that it has happened and on the East Coast. Oh yes yes. And the best advice that anyone can give you at this stage is mosquito reduction. Look at where you have your horses. Get rid of all the you know garbage or you know soda cans or spare tires anything that might serve as a mosquito breeding habitat. That's something every every citizen can and should be doing in an Illinois and take that responsibility upon yourself because that's not something your local

health department will be able to do. And she other than that I don't have really I'd have to defer to the USDA for recommendations. Thank you for the reference. Sure. OK. Thank you. The questions again are we welcome three three three W. wild toll free 800 1:58 WFLA. According to what I read there there has been a vaccine tested for Japanese encephalitis which is supposed to be similar to that that's caused by West Nile and maybe some people think that would work. How you're shaking your head how close are we to having a vaccine for West Nile encephalitis. Well actually as far as the Japanese encephalitis goes we did a research project on that with the National Wildlife Health Center USGS out of Madison Wisconsin because after the first summer we knew we were going into another summer of West Nile and we still had outdoor birds and we had birds that had not Ciro converted that were susceptible and we were looking for anything that

might provide you know provide protection to the birds in our care at. At Madison they did a trial. He had I think 10 crows four of them survived. Well it's it's it was better than 100 percent fatality. However when we did a similar vaccine study in birds that represented four different orders of birds in the zoo we had you know a dock and a pheasant and simply what we did was we administered the vaccine. We tried to see if they mounted any kind of immune response that would be protective against Japanese encephalitis or West Nile virus. And unfortunately neither occurred. So we did not use Japanese encephalitis as the vaccine. There's also an issue called immune enhancement that is of concern that really would have to defer to orbit overall adjusts but there's a concern that vaccination with one kind of. Orrible virus may

make you more susceptible to serious effects when you're exposed to another one. So there were pros and cons for trying to do that. And and then ultimately as I said it didn't work and our Boyer says these are the ones that transmitted by mosquitoes Yes arthropod borne just means mosquito born or any other author pod and so the idea is that then instead of helping you giving the vaccine actually might mean that if you were then exposed to it you would be worse off than. Yeah cause otherwise it's a theoretical concern by people who know a lot more about horrible viruses and I do. As far as the what we are hoping will happen the. This recombinant DNA vaccine that's been developed by researchers at CDC and in combination with the Colorado State University and some military folks. We believe the vaccine works. We think it will be available. And like I said far

sooner than any human vaccine we are now going to be doing controlled trials in birds to see if it also protects birds and that'll happen within the next few weeks. If it works we're hoping to at least have an injectable vaccine that will protect endangered species by this summer long term. We hope to create the people who are working on this. Mike Bunning and Dr. Jeff Chang they hope to create a bird seed delivery vaccine. Now that may sound crazy but the intention would be to decrease the amount of birds in the environment that have enough virus to infect mosquitoes. The fact is you can't eliminate mosquitoes. You can't eliminate birds. If we can knock down the numbers and interrupt the transmission of virus to humans and to other birds then them will have done something as a better alternative than actually trying to go out and spray and kill mosquitoes. Yeah well the other the other thing that's recently come to light.

Experimental work done at the National Wildlife Health Center has proven that there is direct bird to bird transmission of this virus. In the absence of easy to get rid of the mosquito Yeah sort of like well you can blast the world with pesticides but if there's direct spread you know are you going to be free of West Nile virus. You may not get human infections but that doesn't mean it isn't going to continue to spread throughout the country. And just at last week's meeting Dr. McClain announced that he was able to successfully in fact Crowe's by feeding them infected mice so the oral transmission occurs that raises a lot of questions about scavengers. Is that why crows were dying at such high numbers. Because that's what they do is that's why that why we were seeing so many hawks and eagles that were dying from the virus. Is it because they were eating infected passer in birds many many questions that remain to be answered and basically until we are able to do that kind of research you really can't make predictions about this virus because he how can you

predict what you don't understand. OK. Let's we have some other callers will go to again here are banned in number two. Hello. Hello. Well yes. My question is if you find a dead bird in your yard how should you handle it and who should you call. My understanding is at least in New York City and from what I understand I believe every health department in the United States has received funding from the CDC to become part of the National West Nile surveillance initiative at least in New York. They have a have a hotline that people can use to call and report that they have found a dead bird. I'm certain your health department is looking into doing something similar. And so I would recommend that you call your your local health department and ask them what protocols they are putting into place for this spring and summer. Good. Thank you so much. Thank you. And though is what are the chances that a human being can get this by handling a dead bird.

Well the recommendations have been from the very beginning don't pick them up with bare hands. I wouldn't do that with anything. They have lots of other diseases. The we still don't know really what the actual potential health risk may be these birds are a. They haven't and an intense amount of virus. We know that's shed through the kidneys and the tract. We don't know what risk that may produce for the public. But I would urge people to take caution and certainly not to handle birds except through a plastic bag. And whatever your local health department recommends that's what I would do. OK next caller is in civil line 1. Hello how you doing. Hey I was just wondering you know how does this really compare to. You know like the disaster is going on and one with hope and

mouth disease you know is it. Is that something that could be monumental in nature or is it just something that you know. You know we're really of interest. Oh no no no no I think. I think we are a long way from knowing what the ultimate effects of West Nile virus will be in this country because there are so many many variables we do not yet understand. We don't know what will happen when this virus comes up to comes gets into other mosquito populations. We don't know what will happen when it reaches areas where you haven't Demick St. Louis and satellite us activity. We don't know if the virus may naturally recombine with some other virus that's out there in nature. That's something RNA viruses like to do. There are just so many unknowns about this. Basically we don't know what's going to happen as far as how this compares with the foot and mouth outbreak in England. The same lesson of how I think the whole world still thinks of disease in

the way we did in 1900 twenties I guess. I think it's like wishful thinking that you know these disasters that take place are only going to take place in the movies. But in fact if you look at the way people and animals move throughout the world today any disease can be anywhere within eight hours. It's only a plane ride away. We don't fumigate planes we don't fumigate ships. We have you know millions of people passing through our airports every single day that could have landed come across from the other side of the world be incubating a virus and boom there they are the same thing applies for the way we move animals and the fact that we keep them in an intensive management situations. And one infected animal you can have animals in the four corners of the world eight hours later because of the way we move these animals for agriculture and for sale. You know I was just you know you know obviously you know this virus comes from. You know northern northern Africa and that area

that seems like a lot. Logical place to go study. And you don't really hear people screaming. You know that the world's going to and because of it. No but. Actually if you look at West Nile virus outbreaks the reason this has been relatively unstudied is back in the 60s and 50s there were only sporadic outbreaks. But in the past decade this far these viruses are picking up speed. The outbreak in Romania the outbreaks in Israel the outbreaks in Russia the outbreak in France. This is no longer or you see it once every 10 years. And in fact the outbreak in Israel had much higher. Human fatality as did the one in Romania the people who are experts in this area are concerned. We are utterly unprepared in the United States to deal with mosquito borne diseases. The field of medical entomology has all but disappeared. New York City didn't have a mosquito control program because well we've never had a problem.

So how do you justify spending that money. This could just as easily have been yellow fever or Rift Valley fever. And I think there's a certain wishful thinking that if we don't recognize it we don't have to deal with it and we don't have to worry about it but in fact I think we should be worrying about not just this disease but many others. I just you know I understand your point of view and everything and. If you know these threats have been with us for many many many years. Ah but this is a particularly virulent strain of West Nile. This is not like any old orrible virus. This is not like St. Louis and satellite us experimental studies done. Comparing the two viruses and sparrows and Bluejays show there is absolutely no way you can compare those two viruses in birds. How much money you think you need to stop. Well you know I'll tell you I don't know that it's so much money as just interpersonal relationships. The problem we have with West Nile is that it was the first

time in this nation that a disease respected no boundaries it was spread by birds of mosquitoes the birds happen to be wild birds. So that was under the federal government the USGS. The fact that it killed horses. Well that involved the USDA in the fact that it killed people that involved CDC and the public health authorities. None of those groups had ever really talked to each other and if you know that was one of the major stumbling blocks and there's really in the congressional investigation that pursued that that was published on this their conclusion was that our government was utterly unprepared for disease and that that is still a major problem. Oh it's an interesting sort. Choice and it's nice talking to you thanks thanks for the call. As you as you point out the level of mobility that we have in the world now facilitates transmission of disease to a degree that we just haven't seen in the past. One of the questions about West

Nile I guess nobody's really got an answer for is we instead of beginning a program before 1999 we never seen in North America one of the questions is how did it get here. Well actually you know when this first happened everybody said Well could it have been a bioterrorist event. Well you'll never know because unless it's a bioengineered stream with a special little tag on it that says you know manufactured in Iraq you're never going to know and that goes for basically any naturally occurring virus. Also because there was such a delay in diagnosis. You know it's impossible to backtrack three months and figure out whether a mosquito came in from a you know a used tire that we imported from Japan which is how Asia's japonica is and picked us were introduced to this country. We don't know whether it stepped off a plane in terms of a passenger who had been in Israel and had a sufficient fiery Meah to infect mosquitoes. We don't know if it came in with a smuggled bird. Basically we don't know. The way the virus

could have gotten into the country I mean there are there too numerous to list. It's not a question of how we got in here but basically was it here before. And the most sobering part of this whole experience for me has been realizing that the that our surveillance system for biologic agents in the United States is. Quite lacking if I don't know if people realize but back in the sixties most people who died received a post-mortem. So you could establish a cause of death. Well in today's world with HMO Zin it cost $2000 to do a postmortem. Now less than 10 percent percent of people who die actually get investigated. Some like well also what's the body count when do you decide to have a problem. You know how many people have to be in the street before someone actually tries to establish an EDL logic diagnosis and that that's something that still hasn't been addressed. We have about 10 minutes left in this bar to focus 580 our guests Dr. Tracey McNamara she is

a veterinary pathologist who works with Wildlife Conservation Society in New York in the Bronx and was very important in identifying the presence of the West Nile virus in New York City in the summer of 1999 which as we've said a couple of times was a virus that was found other places in the world Africa the Middle East but until then had not been identified in the United States. She's here to give a talk in the Miller come series that's later today but here questions are welcome. 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5. A couple of champagne callers here the next person is lying to you. Yes I am an ornithologist and my first first. Bit is an observation and that is that we have a tremendous amount of you know tropical migrants that spend their winters in the southern hemisphere and their summers in the northern hemisphere. So the amount of

border that you have to protect from Asian diseases or from new diseases from the old world that are mediated by birds. Is much bigger than just the boundaries of the United States. Oh certainly. And it's pretty pretty scary when you think about it. But I think perhaps you know when everyone says well why hasn't this happened a hundred times. It was a serendipity. It was a you need to have certain environmental conditions and who knows maybe in the past we've had birds or people you know infected with West Nile coming to the United States. But it hadn't been the hottest summer we've had on record in New York City. And we you know we had very record high temperatures for weeks and weeks and then we had a very severe storm with flooding. And that makes mosquito populations explode. And it was really I think bad luck the weather was against

us. We had a massive mosquito explosion we had no mosquito control in New York City because it had never been a problem since the 1800s and so you know it was just one of those bad luck kind of things if it had been a cold summer. Maybe nothing would have happened. The ability of a mosquito to transmit virus is critically temperature dependent. Last summer was a pretty cold and wet summer and. I don't you know we we didn't have as many cases as we had the previous one. And the second thing is a selfish point. I handle Iraq and many while you're Yeah well you know I'm going to stick my neck out on this one and since since the virus was identified and I was the pathologist who did all the postmortems at the zoo and demonstrated with him you know his two chemical staining that there's a tremendous amount of virus in the tissues of these birds. I have been

quite asking since this happened what the potential risk might be to people. There are. 18 laboratory documented infections of West Nile under below three conditions meaning there's no mosquito in sight aerosol transmission has been published. The recommendations that the CDC put out is that people take universal precautions that means masks and gloves and are working with. Yes trapping. Yes yes yes. And maybe is that is that overkill. Well I'd rather a little over kill him being conservative with taking precautions than having someone get killed. OK. I think who or what website. Find out what type of worker. Oh. If you go to. Like I said the best websites if you go to the USDA dot gov website they'll have

you know extensive information on West Nile in animals. If you go to a US GI s for United States Geological geologic service you know USGS dot gov. They also have an extensive West Nile database and so does the CDC. And basically you know why we wear mask and gloves with everything and I would urge you to take similar precautions because we know this virus is shed through the kidneys and the intestinal tract. It has been recovered Anchal Wakil swabs and tests are being performed now to try and establish how important the route of transmission that might be going to work. I don't want to graduate. I'm very very good point I know no one wants to die for science I say the same thing goes for the gold. Another champagne version this is line 3. Hello. Yeah let's just say I have a second question one for. It's a crow wings outstretched like it fell from the air and died and the car has been there for say three weeks or

so is it possible to detect the virus. I mean at that point three weeks probably not five days. We've had pretty good success demonstrating with PCR and immuno histo chemical staining viral antigen even an OT ally's specimens but three weeks I'd say that's pretty too far gone. If anyone thinks the head of the carcass probably at that point right. Oh yeah I would think so because it would have undergone complete autolyse us. OK slower we're safer if we wait long enough right. Yeah if you wait long enough but you know the the recommendations that have been used in the east is if you see dead birds and you you know you want to submit them for testing that you should pick them up through a plastic bag. Not not with your bare hands. OK look at it. Thanks a lot and keep going here next will be you know I think the line number one in our band. Hello. Yeah I know and the article on the last year they thought the virus came from a bird in Puerto Rico which I which I take it

as the fourth one is real. But I wanted to ask you. And even worse the vaster for referring to the same article. The worst disaster for like America because in this article they the fellow back in July of last year with saying that he thought the West Nile virus was probably in every corner of North America already and the outbreak series he was expecting. What were the Gulf Coast like the outbreaks. Apparently it's you know from what I gather he's saying that it's odd that must be the article by John Ripoll. Yes right. He also predicted that West Nile would spread south last summer and in fact it went north along the Hudson and up to the Canadian border before it spread south. Basically we know so little about bird migrations we know so little. And there are so many

factors that are involved in how this disease may be spread I think it's nice to make predictions but it will hold up. No one knows. I don't think it's throughout the United States yet because I think you would have seen fatality in horses if not in birds. I mean given given the fact that our surveillance system is going to be quite variable state to state people do have pet horses and and it would be seen if it got into an area that had horses. I'm quite certain of that. And from what we've seen in New York you're going to have a spike in cases of encephalitis in people. So even if people aren't out there looking for dead birds I think you know there will be indicators that we have a problem. But if but if it if it did manage to get down to the Gulf Coast Oh yeah this could be devastating That's why we're working on a vaccine. I mean it would probably go into America obviously Central American and South America as well. Oh sure. Now that would

be devastating. Yes it could be it could be really. Many species of birds are susceptible to this virus. You know they're really they have tropical fish. Yes that's been the question all along what happens when this virus goes further south where mosquitoes are a year round problem. Yeah. All right back to another caller line to this is champagne. Hello hello. Yes I have a dog that loves investigating dead birds. And is there any how I read to dog and what with him going. Or you know no one can give you a scientific answer to that at this point. However I will say that at last week's International West Nile symposium Dr. Bob McLean from the National Wildlife Health Center announced that he was able to successfully in fact own kill crows by feeding them infected mice. So oral transmission of the

virus occurred from mice to crows. We have no idea whether that applies to other species. But I do everything I could to discourage my dog from doing that. OK. Thank you. Sure. Well we're going to have to leave it at that because we hear at the end of the time but I do you again want to tell people who are in and around Champaign-Urbana if you're interested in hearing more on this subject from our guest Tracy McNamara she'll be giving a talk in the Miller comedy series looking at the West Nile virus as a wake up call for veterinarian public health preparedness. That's in room 180 beer hall on the UI campus today at 4 o'clock. Tracy McNamara works for the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York City she's a veterinary pathologist. Thanks very much. Thank you so much.