Mosquito War:
The Battle Begins

By Tamara Hartman & Stephen McGuire

t began with a phone call from Borough President Claire Shulman’s press secretary, Dan Andrews. A personal call from Andrews told the newsroom that something really big was going to happen. All Andrews would say was that there was going to be a press conference in College Point, he gave the location and the time, said Mayor Rudy Giuliani was going to be there, and said it was going to be big.

Then he said it was a health hazard.

It was September 1999.  Now it seems a lifetime before New York City learned to equate the words “health hazard” or “bio hazard” with terrorism. Then Assistant Editor Stephen McGuire and Photo Editor Ira Cohen were assigned to the press conference, and they called in from College Point with a bizarre story about mosquitoes, a potentially deadly virus and something the Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management and the Health Department were calling “St. Louis Encephalitis.”

And that was the first day of reporting on what health officials and news stories now call the West Nile Virus.

A Virus By Any Other Name

The Tribune’s first story on the virus that would come to be an annual health warning for New York ran in the Sept. 8-15, 1999 edition and reported the following:

“As the Tribune went to press and more helicopters passed over Queens roofs to spray insecticide on the borough at night, three people were dead, 48 people were sick and nine people knew for sure that they were suffering from St. Louis Encephalitis.

“It is a confusing disease carried by mosquitoes that the City Department of Health believes were breeding in College Point. Some people – those who are younger and very healthy – may only suffer flu-like symptoms or never even know they have it. Others – more advanced in years or susceptible to disease – could lapse into comas or die...

“For Queens, it means that if 48 possible cases are being treated, there could be between 9,000 and 48,000 people infected . . . and most of them will probably never get sick. Others will have to wait four to 14 days for symptoms to appear. . .

“The symptoms can be flu like, but the key is a high and prolonged fever without coughing or other cold symptoms, Flushing Hospital doctors said. The initial patients treated by Conetta, Dr. Deborah Asnis, Dr. Jeffrey Appelbaum and Dr. Robert Crupi at Flushing led to the diagnosis of SLE. Conetta said that anyone with a high fever, headaches, nausea, diarrhea and tiredness or muscle fatigue would do well to consult their physician.

“Other symptoms can include vomiting, a stiff neck and back, drowsiness, clumsiness, irritability.

“Emergency symptoms can include loss of consciousness, seizures, muscle weakness and paralysis, and sudden dementia or and memory loss . . . .

“[The insecticide] Malathion was sprayed from helicopters overhead and fogged through neighborhood streets throughout the day on Sept. 4. According to the City Health Department, an area roughly bounded by Flushing Bay and the Van Wyck Expwy to the west, Utopia Pkwy to the east, the Long Island Expwy to the south and the Long Island Sound to the north was sprayed by either fog truck or by air.

“John Gadd, a spokesperson for the Health Department, said that ‘every effort was made to notify the public’ of the spraying before it happened and pamphlets were issued in six different languages. Gadd added that the Health Department, working in cooperation with the OEM, had contacted ‘community groups’ and other important organizations, however he could not provide information on who had been contacted and when.

“However, Beechhurst residents jogged through mists of the insecticide in the early morning hours of Sept. 4 before receiving late morning warnings to stay indoors during spraying. Stores closed down in the Bay Terrace shopping center to send staff and customers home before nighttime spraying, yet on Bell Boulevard – just a few minutes away by car – residents walked the sidewalks and enjoyed the open-air feel of restaurants with their facades open to the street.

“At a quickly called a press conference held at the foot of Powell’s Cove Park on Sept. 3, Mayor Rudy Giuliani urged area residents to remain calm as he demonstrated how to apply insect repellent – a method City health officials are touting as one of several ways those in Northeast Queens can prevent being infected by the rare bug-borne virus.”

Advice To Residents

When the first outbreak came in 1999, the City Health Department advised residents to do the following, and they continue to offer similar advice every year as mosquito season comes to Queens:

• Wear long-sleeved shirts, long pants and socks when outdoors and use mosquito repellant on exposed skin.

• Use insect repellants with no more than 30 percent DEET, but use sparingly and with care. Products containing 15 percent or less DEET are recommended for children but products containing DEET should not be used on infants.

• Avoid unnecessary outdoor activity from dusk until dawn when mosquitoes are most active.

• Remove water from cans and jars, discarded tires, clogged roof gutters, yard decorations or any other outdoor containers since mosquitoes lay eggs in standing water.

• Ensure that your home has tight-fitting screens over windows and doors to keep mosquitoes from entering apartments and homes.

More Information Needed

A month later, the story continued to change as information was released slowly and unevenly and issues of spraying schedules began. The trouble of spraying notification began in 1999, but has continued through the 2002 mosquito season, when Borough President Helen Marshall’s office took issue with the City’s notification process.

In Sept. 29 – Oct. 6, 1999, the story in the Tribune was as follows:

“Over a month after City officials first descended upon Powell’s Cove in College Point to alert the City about a potentially deadly disease carried by mosquitoes and mounted an aggressive insecticide spraying campaign, questions about the disease still linger and health officials with needles are knocking on doors searching for some answers . . . .

“As of the Health Dept.’s Oct. 3 update, 38 cases of ‘West Nile-like virus have been confirmed by the CDC, 166 cases are under investigation and four Queens people are dead. The most recently confirmed case was a 71-year-old Jackson Heights man who has already been discharged from the hospital.

“Of the 38 positive cases, 29 are age 60 or over, three are in their 50s, and the remaining six were 5, 15, 29, 32, 28 and 40-years old. All of the reported deaths have been among the more senior patients . . . .

“The U.S. Center for Disease Control has confirmed that the disease being fought in Queens and now spreading as far as Nassau and Westchester is not caused by the St. Louis virus, as first reported, but by the West Nile virus.

“The West-Nile virus is usually only found Africa, Asia and the Middle East, Dr. Deborah Asnis, director of infectious diseases at Flushing Hospital and part of the team of doctors who first uncovered the illness in Queens...

“There is also no specific treatment for West Nile virus encephalitis, Asnis added, but just as in St. Louis Encephalitis (SLE), patients are kept nourished and hydrated to ride out the storm.”

What is West Nile Fever?

West Nile Fever (WNF) is a mosquito-borne disease that can cause encephalitis, or inflammation of the brain. It is caused by the West Nile Virus, named after the West Nile district of Uganda where the virus was first isolated in 1937. The viruses that cause West Nile Fever and St. Louis Encephalitis come from the same family of flaviviruses, and cause diseases that are similar to one another. West Nile-like virus, such as St. Louis Encephalitis, are spread to humans by the bite of infected mosquitoes. A mosquito becomes infected by biting a bird which carries the virus. WNF is not spread by person-to-person contact or directly from birds to persons.

For more information?

• For more information on the virus or to report puddles of water or dead birds, log on to the City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene website at http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/home.html

• To call for more information or to make a report, dial 311.