Results tagged “westnile”

Good morning, Houston. Noticed a sharp increase in the number of mosquitoes this summer? You will, observers say — and now, Harris County's first confirmed 2007 human case of West Nile virus has been reported. Break out the insect repellent, check up on the West Nile symptoms and do your best not to get stung — although, these days, we guess that's about like saying "stay out of the humidity." >>A break in Gearen...

Good morning, Houston. We're regular NPR listeners, and we enjoy it as much as the next guy when legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg gives us another thrilling reading of a Supreme Court transcript. Even so, we were a little surprised to hear an ad the other day for NPR's newest piece of merchandise, the limited-edition Nina Totin' Bag. Yes, it's what you'd think it is: a tote bag with Totenberg's mug on it (in,...

Good morning, Houston. Remember when our fair city was trying to land the summer Olympics? Well, maybe we should be happy we didn't get them, given London's problems with its 2012 Olympics logo. The logo — a brightly colored, highly abstracted version of the numerals "2012" that cost $796,000 to design — drew fire at first for its look, and now there's word that the animated version of the logo is apparently causing epileptic...

OK, so you wouldn't want to get caught in Galveston in a rainstorm (that whole "8 feet above sea level" thing's kind of a bummer), but KHOU's reporting that you might not want to get caught in the days after the storm either. Those days, you see, are full of mosquitos, and mosquitos carry West Nile. Three Galveston County residents have been confirmed as being diagnosed with the virus within the past month. That makes this year the heaviest for West Nile in Galveston County in the past three years.

Mosquito spraying over 138,272 acres of northeast and northwest Harris County will begin tonight in an effort to combat West Nile Virus. The aerial spraying will run from after dark to 4 a.m. tonight and tomorrow night and will be supplemented by truck spraying in certain areas.

Planes laden with insecticide have been spraying northern Harris County since Wednesday night, an earlier-than-normal response to a higher-than-usual number of mosquitoes with the West Nile virus. Though only one human case of West Nile has been reported this year, testing has turned up 84 infected mosquitoes — nearly four times the number found by this time last year. The increase is unusual, Harris County Mosquito Control Director Rudy Bueno told the Chronicle, but the county's changing weather patterns have probably conributed to it. "If we don't deal with this aggressively, it might translate into more human cases than there otherwise would be," Bueno said. "We don't want to chance that."