West Nile virus claims life of Contra Costa woman

By Jeff Shuttleworth / Brigid Gaffikin, Bay City News Service

August 24, 2006

Contra Costa County Public Health Director Dr. Wendel Brunner said this morning that the Bay Area's first human victim of West Nile virus, an elderly Contra Costa County woman, died "some days ago" but health officials didn't confirm until Wednesday that the mosquito-borne virus was to blame.

Brunner said the elderly woman lived in central Costa Costa County but he declined to specify which city, saying, "We want to protect the privacy of the patient and her family."

Two other people in the central county have become ill after contracting the virus, Brunner said.

He said the woman who died contracted the virus from an infected mosquito's bite, which is how it is always transmitted to humans. West Nile virus is not spread by person-to-person contact, he emphasized.

Craig Downs, general manager of the Contra Costa County Mosquito and Vector Control District, joined Brunner at a news conference this morning to announce that his agency would spray 6,600 acres along the waterfront from Martinez to Pittsburg at dusk in an effort to kill mosquitoes.

The woman's death is a first for Contra Costa County and the Bay Area, and it marks the second West Nile-related fatality in California this year. The state's first human death blamed on the virus this year was on Aug. 17, when an elderly Butte County woman died after contracting it.

In 2005, 19 people died after being infected with West Nile virus, according to Michelle Mussuto, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Health Services.

California has seen 49 deaths since 1999, when the virus was first detected, Mussuto said.

On Aug. 15, health officials announced that a 65-year-old Saratoga man had contracted the first confirmed human case of West Nile virus this year in the Bay Area.

Another two human cases of the virus have been reported in Solano County.

Elderly people are more at risk of developing deadly symptoms, but around 80 percent of people who are infected by West Nile virus don't even know it, according to health officials.

Up to 20 percent of people who become infected exhibit symptoms such as fever, headache, nausea, vomiting, body aches and sometimes swollen lymph glands or rash on the chest, stomach or back, according to Contra Costa Health Services.

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