Bogalusa Mayor Mack McGehee says he has reports of two cases of West Nile Virus in the community and at least one has been confirmed in a laboratory report obtained by The Daily News.
McGehee said he's personally received reports that a resident of north Bogalusa and one from the Pleasant Hill area had both been confirmed as West Nile victims. Both, he said, are now out of the hospital and recovering.
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In that instance, testing was done on Monday, Sept. 12 at St. Tammany Parish Hospital in Covington with the lab analysis conducted by ARUP Laboratories in Salt Lake City.
Test results showed his cerebro-spinal fluid tested well above the positive threshold for West Nile. In one test, a positive reading was considered to be 1.11 or greater and the patient results were 4.81. In the other, the positive range started at 1.51 and the patient tested at 2.12.
Earlier this week, Bob Johannessen of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals (LDHH) said Hurricane Katrina knocked out information gathering capabilities and that the agency had not received updated counts that would include local infections. By midweek, however, the agency had reported 30 new cases of the virus, including two in Washington Parish.
Although most of the cases listed in the update reportedly occurred before the passages of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the LDHH said the storms do not appear to have increased the instances of infection, as some had feared.
"The gloomy predictions of large outbreaks of West Nile did not come through and may not materialize before the end of the season," said State Epidemiologist Dr. Raoult Ratard. "Post-hurricane cases are very few and mostly occurred in the Baton Rouge area and the northshore area of Lake Pontchartrain, where the virus was heavily present before the hurricanes."
The two Washington Parish victims were reportedly infected after Hurricane Katrina and are the first listed for the parish this year.
The new list of cases includes two from Ascension Parish, one from Beauregard, three from Caddo, one from Calcasieu, one from Caldwell, two from East Baton Rouge, two from Iberville, one from Jefferson, one from Livingston, one from Morehouse, four from Orleans, one from Ouachita, three from Rapides, one from Richland, one from St. Tammany, two from Tangipahoa and one from Vernon.
Ratard said the 2005 season appears more similar to 2003 and 2004 than 2002, when the state saw a massive outbreak of the disease.
"We do not anticipate seeing such an outbreak this year, even after the recent storm activity," he said.
In 2002, 329 cases, including 25 deaths, were reported in Louisiana. In 2003, there were 122 cases and seven deaths, and in 2004, there were 114 cases and seven deaths.
Since mosquitoes, which breed in standing water, spread the virus many expected an increase in cases after the storms.
The hurricanes not only left water standing in places that could not be easily drained or dumped, but also caused people to move outdoors or to open unscreened windows and doors in the attempt to find some respite from the heat during the resultant and, in many cases, weeks-long power outages.
The LDHH advises people to use mosquito repellant, wear long-sleeved shirts and long pants and to avoid wearing perfumes and colognes when outside for prolonged periods of time. Additionally, any standing water should be dumped and screens should be checked and secured.
McGehee said Bogalusa has had two trucks spraying for mosquitoes from 6 p.m. through 6 a.m. every night in an effort to combat the mosquito problem. For a brief period after Katrina, a C-130 was converted for use in the spraying effort. McGehee said he plans to call the military back to action.
The mayor also said the recent "cold weather snap" might have helped, but urged residents to do everything they can to keep mosquitoes from breeding.
"Get a good spray that has DEET in it and dump whatever standing water you can," he said. "This is just one more thing we can thank Katrina for."
DEET is the common name for N, N-diethyl-m-toluamide, which is the active ingredient in the most widely used insect repellents applied to the skin
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