Arboviral Surveillance throughout the United States Symposium
Arboviral Surveillance throughout the United States Symposium
Mosquito control organizations (MCOs) in the United States are charged with monitoring mosquito abundance and West Nile virus prevalence, assessing the risk to humans, and then intervening with mosquito control treatments to disrupt arboviral outbreaks thereby reducing the risk of arboviral infection in human populations. The best methods for assessing risk, as commonly employed by MCOs, contain assumptions and methodological flaws which complicates the ability of MCOs to coordinate interventions with the periods of highest risk to humans. In this study, we analyzed highly detailed, near-daily, disaggregated mosquito abundance and WNv prevalence data and compared that to an operational “best practice” MCO surveillance program. The results of this analysis indicate that the: 1) sympatric mosquitoes Culex restuans [Theobald] and Culex pipiens Linnaeus exhibit very different patterns of abundance and WNv infection rate, 2) WNv activity is highly variable on a day-to-day basis, 3) Gravid and host-seeking mosquitoes do not exhibit similar patterns of WNv infection and activity, 4) Cx. pipiens, when taxonomically separated from Cx. restuans using updated morphological keys, exhibited an extraordinarily high preference for human blood meals. Each of these observations impacts how the risk to humans of arboviral infection is assessed by MCOs.