Tom Breaud’s job is to control mosquitoes, but Thursday he was working hard to control fear.
“I’ve had calls from all over–New Jersey, Ohio, West Virginia, Washington, D.C.–one guy called from Brazil,” said Breaud, Orange County’s mosquito control manager.
They’ve all heard media reports about the alert for St. Louis encephalitis in Orange County, home of Walt Disney World.
“They seem to be under the impression that as soon as they step off the plane, a mosquito is going to bite them, and they will die two minutes later,” Breaud said.
Four days after Orange County issued an alert for the disease-carrying mosquitoes, and nearly four weeks after Indian River County issued a similar warning, there have been no reported human cases in the state.
Tests for St. Louis encephalitis have been performed on 79 people from across Florida, and all have come back negative, Dr. Steven Wiersma, a deputy state epidemiologist, said Thursday.
Still, experts continue to urge personal protection measures to those in central Florida who venture out at night and the county has stepped up its mosquito spraying.
“We are not out of the woods on this thing,” said Tom Loyless, biologist with the state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. “When cases turn up, they can turn up quickly. Within a week you can have a flood of cases.”
In 1990, 226 people got the disease and 11 died in an outbreak under conditions–wet weather hospitable to mosquito breeding and infections in animals used to monitor the virus–that experts say are similar to this year.
