West Nile virus has made its way into Wilmington and west-central Kent County.
The Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control’s Mosquito Control Section, along with the Delaware Division of Public Health Laboratory and the Department of Agriculture, detected the West Nile earlier this month along the Delaware River in the Wilmington area and again, in west-central Kent County.
Both instances were confirmed by blood samples taken from DNREC’s sentinel chickens.
Eastern equine encephalitis was also recently detected from a sentinel chicken in southwestern New Castle County. Additionally, a WNV-positive wild crow was recently found in northwestern New Castle County.
So far in Delaware this year, no cases of WNV or EEE have been found in humans or horses.
Division of Fish and Wildlife Mosquito Control Section Administrator Dr. William Meredith says Mosquito Control will increase its mosquito population monitoring activities in targeted areas and continue to take appropriate control actions as warranted.
