West Nile virus outbreak hits California's Orange County

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West Nile virus outbreak hits California's Orange County

<p><a href="http://news.yahoo.com/west-nile-virus-outbreak-hits-californias-orange-county-215408110.html"><img src="http://l2.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/Se_J2C_jIXJ0_AeTZx813g--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTg2O3E9NzU7dz0xMzA-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/Reuters/2014-09-09T221846Z_1_LYNXMPEA8813P_RTROPTP_2_USA-WESTNILE-CALIFORNIA.JPG" width="130" height="86" alt="A female Aedes aegypti mosquito is shown in this 2006 Center for Disease Control (CDC)" align="left" title="A female Aedes aegypti mosquito is shown in this 2006 Center for Disease Control (CDC)" border="0" /></a>By Steve Gorman LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - An outbreak of the West Nile virus in California's Orange County has infected more than 90 people so far this year, seven times as many as were diagnosed in all of 2013, and public health experts say the region's prolonged drought may be a factor. Not only has the number of human infections reported in the Southern California county since January dwarfed the 12 cases documented for all of 2013, but the prevalence of West Nile in birds, which harbor the virus, and in the mosquitoes transmitting it has also spiked. &quot;Getting people in Southern California, which is not a particularly buggy place, to think about covering up and using bug repellent is an uphill battle,&quot; Deanne Thompson, a spokeswoman at the Orange County Health Care Agency, said on Tuesday. POSSIBLE DROUGHT IMPACT Mosquito populations in Southern California this season are below normal, owing in part to a persistent drought that has dried up much of the standing water where the insects breed.</p><br clear="all"/>

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