Newtown To Receive Funds To Combat Encephalitis

By Jeff White

Lieutenant Governor M. Jodi Rell announced late last week that Newtown would join the list of 44 municipalities statewide already slated to receive $500,000 in state funding to combat the threat of mosquitoes infected with the West Nile-like or Eastern Equine Encephalitis viruses.

The funding allocated to the state’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) will provide for “preemptive larviciding” in Newtown and other targeted areas that have had recent positive isolations of either of the two Encephalitis viruses. It is an effort to get to mosquitoes before they become adult size.

Although last summer and fall, during the encephalitis outbreak in the region, Newtown did not have any positive isolates for the West Nile-like virus, infected crows and mosquitoes were trapped in the nearby towns of Greenwich, Stamford, and Westport. As recently as 1998, a bird-biting mosquito infected with Eastern Equine Encephalitis was trapped inside Newtown. Town Director of Health Mark Cooper said this week that these two realities are what landed Newtown onto the list of target communities.

 It still has to be determined what portion of the $500,000 in funding will be allocated for Newtown.

Mr Cooper said that the larviciding would be concentrated in wetland areas around town, and in catch basins.

“We are working on a [funding] formula for 45 towns,” said Paul Copotosto, a program specialist in wetlands for the DEP. The funding for larviciding would be based on a town’s proximity to coastal or inland wetlands, and the amount of impervious surface present in a town.

“We should know all this by April 11,” he added, explaining that during municipal meetings each town would be told what they would be getting for funding.

The West Nile-like encephalitis outbreak reached its zenith last fall in the New York City borough of Queens, where a number of human casualties were attributed to the virus. As late as October 7, close to 2,500 mosquitoes were trapped and tested in lower Fairfield County.

The trappings were successful in isolating two pools of mosquitoes infected with the virus near a Greenwich golf course on October 4. The isolates, coupled with a score of dead crows found in Westport and Stamford — eight of which tested positive for the virus — helped health experts to track exactly how far the New York outbreak spread into Connecticut.

With the approach of winter, many health experts last fall hoped that infected mosquitoes would not make it through the cold temperatures of December, January, and February.

The decision by Governor John Rowland to add $500,000 to the one million dollars the DEP has already earmarked for mosquito control comes on the heels of two significant occurrences that have health experts concerned about another outbreak.

According to Dr Theodore Andreadis, chief medical entomologist for the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven, isolate strands of the West Nile-like virus have recently been pulled from “overwintering” mosquitoes in Queens.

In addition, explained Dr Andreadis, Red Tail hawks as close by as Westchester County have recently tested positive for the virus.