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Meteorological and Geographic Relationships to West Nile Virus in the Southern Plains
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West Nile Virus in the News
Four North Texas Counties Jointly Fighting West Nile Virus
Richardson officials said Thursday that mosquitoes caught in four traps scattered throughout the Dallas County suburb tested positive for the virus. The results were confirmed late Wednesday.
Four North Texas Counties Jointly Fighting West Nile Virus
DALLAS (CBS 11 NEWS) - Four North Texas county health departments are combining their planning and information to combat this year's West Nile virus season.
Leaders from Dallas, Tarrant, Collin and Denton counties have been meeting since January to share strategies and discuss their collaborative efforts.
CDC Releases Final Report for 2012
For all of 2012 through December 11, a total of 5,387
cases were
reported,
including
243
deaths. Of
those, 1/3 of all cases were
reported in the state of Texas. The
total number of cases was the highest reported since 2003.
Who are we?
We are a Capstone group at the University of Oklahoma. Our project attempts to determine a Correlation between meteorological variables and West Nile Virus outbreaks on the Southern Plains.Project Summary:
The World Health Organization and the World Meteorological Organization recently published a report (World Health Organization, 2012) on human health and disease and its relation to climate. Weather and climate play an important role in disease spread, since diseases and their vectors need favorable environments to develop and reproduce. One such disease is the West Nile Virus (WNV). Mosquito vectors of WNV are highly susceptible to weather and climate conditions, but current research in how meteorological parameters influence WNV outbreaks is underdeveloped. Most studies focus on small geographic areas, such as cities or counties. Thus they do not often produce results that apply to whole regions of the United States. This study seeks to understand which and how meteorological characteristics correlate with WNV outbreaks in the Southern Plains, a region of the U.S. largely neglected in past WNV studies. These correlations will be calculated with the intent of producing a predictive index for the Southern Plains. Increased predictability will allow public health officials to better prepare for future outbreaks in an effort to minimize harmful effects.
Research will use meteorological data from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR) as well as from observational networks such as the Oklahoma Mesonet and the Southern Regional Climate Center (SRCC). This data will be correlated with WNV cases reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prediction (CDC). These correlations will distinguish which factors exert the strongest influence on WNV outbreaks in the Southern U.S. Combinations of the meteorological parameters that correlate well with WNV outbreaks may be used to predict them in the future.