The Massachusetts Department of Public Health reported the first two cases of West Nile in people on Tuesday.
Two people in Massachusetts have contracted the West Nile virus, which is spread by mosquitoes. These are the first human cases of the virus in the state this year.
On Tuesday, August 29, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) said that a woman in her 70s had been exposed to the virus in another part of the country, and a guy in his 40s had been exposed in Middlesex County, Massachusetts.
Authorities said that the chance of getting the virus is modest in the Greater Boston area, which includes Middlesex, Norfolk, and Suffolk counties, as well as parts of Bristol, Plymouth, Worcester, Hampden, Hampshire, and Berkshire counties.
“This is the first time this year that a West Nile virus infection has been found in a person from Massachusetts,” said Robert Goldstein, MD, PhD, who is in charge of public health.
Goldstein said that August and September are the months when the dangerous virus is most likely to spread.
“This year, there are a lot of mosquitoes that can carry and spread this virus, and the number of WNV-positive mosquito samples from different parts of the Commonwealth has been going up,” Goldstein said.
In Massachusetts, eight cases of people getting sick with West Nile virus in 2022. The first one was reported on August 25. On September 1, 2021, the first case was reported.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that since the West Nile virus first came to the U.S. in 1999, it has become the most common disease spread by mosquitoes in the country.
The West Nile virus is a flavivirus in the same family as yellow fever, dengue fever, Japanese encephalitis, and the Zika virus. According to the CDC’s website, the virus usually spreads when Culex mosquitoes bite sick birds and then bite people or other animals.
It is impossible to spread the virus by eating or touching sick animals or birds. It also can’t be spread by coughing or sneezing.
On its website, the CDC says that around 80% of people who get WNV will not have any signs.
“These people wouldn’t know they had been infected before unless their blood was tested,” Dr. George Thompson, a professor of medicine at UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, told Fox News Digital in an email.
About one in five people will get febrile sickness, which includes fever, body aches, headaches, joint pain, diarrhea, rash, and vomiting. These symptoms often go away on their own, but some people may still feel tired and weak months after an illness.
The CDC says on its website that the virus can cause significant problems with the nervous system in about one out of every 150 people who get it. These problems include encephalitis (inflammation of the brain) and meningitis (inflammation of the membranes that cover the brain and spinal cord).
When a virus infects the central nervous system, it can cause a headache, stiff neck, high fever, confusion, loss of vision, muscle weakness, seizures, tremors, coma, or paralysis.