Outbreak Update:
A New Virus Name & Door-To-Door Testing

By STEPHEN McGUIRE & TAMARA HARTMAN 

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.

Some Queens residents are upset over how the city has handled the mosquito crisis so far.

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.

Same Old Disease With A New Virus Name

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.

Demonstrators gather in front of Borough Hall recently to protest the spraying of malathion in Queens.

Asnis explained that West-Nile is a "quasi-virus," and just like the St. Louis virus, it can cause diseases as serious as encephalitis, the lesser evil of meningitis which also causes swelling of the brain, flu-like symptoms, or no illness at all. The virus is contracted in the same way that the St. Louis virus is contracted and the same precautions regarding mosquitoes apply.

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. Asnis said the mistake in virus identification was probably due to the fact that usually, when encephalitis occurs in North America, it is the SLE variety. Only when dead crows were discovered and tested was the West Nile virus distinctly found.

Asnis, who herself is originally from Whitestone which is one of the neighborhoods being described as "ground zero" for the outbreak, added that Flushing Hospital is not seeing new confirmed cases of encephalitis from this outbreak. She said her last case, which was confirmed, came into the hospital early in September and although one addition case in pending, she said the hospital is not seeing a flow of new sufferers.

However, the doctor added that she is seeing a flow of patients reporting that they suffered from flu-like symptoms and high fevers in August, which may have been due to the virus that was not yet identified at that time.

Test Knocking At Your Door

According to Health Dept., over the next two to three weeks, officials will be conducting surveys at randomly selected homes in zip codes 11354, 11357 and 11358 – the area where the outbreak was first discovered — to determine what percentage of people have been exposed to the West-Nile virus.

During these surveys, Health Dept. personnel and officials from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control will be taking blood samples from people living in Whitestone, Linden Hill, Murray Hill and Auburndale to determine if they were exposed to the West-Nile virus.

"Blood samples will be tested for anti-bodies to the West-Nile like virus. The presence of anti-bodies would indicate that a person was infected by the virus, but did not and will not necessarily become sick," said Dr. Neil Cohen, commissioner of the Health Dept.

Cohen added that the presence of anti-bodies will help the Dept. of Health find out who is most at risk for becoming sick once exposed, and how exposure to the virus and illness may be prevented.

Currently, the only known information about the virus has come from hospitalized patients thought to have contracted mosquito borne St. Louis Encephalitis.

Health Dept. officials warned that local residents should request official identification before opening their doors to anyone claiming to be a part of the testing process.

Results Annonymous

In an effort to keep the survey random and anonymous, Health Dept. and CDC officials will not be asking those they test for information such as name and address.

Therefore, health officials said those surveyed will not be able to get back results of their blood test and the laboratory will not be able to find out who the sample came from.

To notify area residents about the testing, the Health Dept. has enlisted the help of Community Board 7, according to District Manager Marilyn Bitterman who spent time over the Oct 2 weekend handing out leaflets at homes and bus stops in and around the test areas.

John Gadd, a spokesperson for the Dept. of Health told the Tribune that the testing will be done to determine what percentage of the population was exposed to the virus, what age groups were affected and what the symptoms were and the results will be released at some undisclosed future time.

Spray Dismay & Protests

"The community wants to know and deserves to know," said Assemblyman Brian McLaughlin about the questions surrounding the use of pesticides like malathion in the City’s war against West-Nile carrying mosquitoes.

McLaughlin has filed an official request with Speaker Sheldon Silver for a joint meeting of the Assembly Health and Environment commissions in an effort to determine whether malathion should be used in future efforts to combat mosquitoes.

McLaughlin called for the meeting in an effort to find answers to questions being posed by concerned residents of his district which is at the epicenter of the West-Nile crisis.

David Levner, chairman of the Queens County Green Party, the group which is heading up weekly demonstrations at Queens Borough Hall, said "The indiscriminate spraying of New York City with pesticides is much worse than the problem it is intended to cure," said David Levner, chairman of the Queens County Green Party, the group which headed up the demonstration.

Members of the Green Party and the Citizen’s Action Committee for Change (CACC), a Bayside based civic group, cited unanswered questions about the levels of concentration of Malathion among the reasons behind the protest.

"It is unthinkable that the mayor can order Malathion indiscriminately without a city, state or federal agency testing the air for safe concentration levels, what carrier agent is used to dilute the pesticide, and using air sampling measurement tests to ensure there are public health safeguards," said Joyce Shephard, president of the CACC group.

Behind the uproar of protestors is what they are calling a "terrible" job of informing the public about the malathion spraying.

A Green Party statement, said that "Many people have been sprayed needlessly because they did not know the spraying schedule or because they were unaware of the dangers of pesticides.

According to a statement issued by the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) recently, malathion, although it is one of the less acutely poisonous incesticides in it’s class, can cause respiratory distress, headaches, diziness, nausea and even more serious symptoms.

According to NYPIRG, malathion was the second leading cause of hospitalization for occupational pesticide poisoning between 1977 and 1982.