“Do you see sleeves on me?” Patricia DeVore asked. It was a rhetorical question: She was with the program.
And she was hoping that other seniors get with the program, too. The program of avoiding contracting the West Nile virus, which can kill the elderly.
The virus killed a woman in the West River neighborhood two years ago. So city officials have been showing up in the neighborhood at the start of mosquito season to offer the elderly tips of avoiding coming down with the disease, caused by bites from infected mosquitoes.
The mayor and his elderly services chief showed up to make the annual pitch at West River Senior Center Tuesday afternoon — the same center they’d been trying to close just this spring before the elderly organized to save it.
The event took place on the same day that the city’s Health Department received results on tests showing the presence again this year of mosquitoes carrying the virus.
Mayor DeStefano (after joking with some children who were present at the center) boiled the message down to three key pieces of advice: Get rid of standing pools of water on your property. Use insect repellent, containers of which the city is distributing free at its senior centers. And cover your arms and legs.
His message rang clear with Patricia Devore. She said that no matter how hot the day, she keeps limbs covered with long-sleeved shirts and jeans.
“We’re older. Our immune system is low,” said Devore, who turns 73 on Sept. 1. She runs the center’s meals on wheels program and otherwise generally hangs out there.
“I don’t want to leave before my time, now. Mosquitoes help you leave before your time.”
City Health Director Bill Quinn said the virus first showed up in Connecticut, in Greenwich, in 1998. There have been 61 cases diagnosed since. In 2006 three cases were reported in parts of New Haven and West Haven near the West River, including one fatality. The state had four reported cases in 2007; none were in New Haven, where an active annual prevention effort takes place. (Click here and here to read about that.)
Besides urging seniors to take precautions, the city is clearing catch basins of standing water, among other efforts at limiting the mosquito population, according to Quinn. He said that on Tuesday his department received results from tests on two “pools” of different kinds of mosquitoes in Beaver Pond Park. Both tested positive for carrying the virus, he said.
He distributed flyers that suggested, in addition to the key points mentioned by DeStefano, throwing out discarded tires (“the most common mosquito breeding site in the country”); declogging gutters, “turn[ing] over plastic wading pools and wheelbarrows when not in use”; “chang[ing] the water in birdbaths”; and keeping window and door screens in good shape. (For more info, call the Health Department at 946‑6999.)
Also on hand at the center, besides the seniors, were kids from the LEAP summer program. They come to West River every Tuesday to sew with the seniors or just to hang out doing puzzles and playing checkers.
Take this seriously everyone from my experience.
I got quite ill with swollen glands and a fever after getting two serious mosquito bites at Savin Rock Beach back in 2006.
My downtown New Haven medical practice HMO Primary Care Provider was clueless treating me as an older not upper class woman as a hysteric as often is the case.
The R.N. on the phone from the great Yale-New Haven Hospital Nurses Helpline (no longer operating sad but true)said I had something in between no reaction and a serious West Nile reaction like meningitis. She said I had West Nile fever. She warned me to keep testing if I could bend my chin to my chest and when I could not to go to the E.R. as I had a more
serious problem.
Fortunately that did not happen and I had the $210 for three acupuncture treatments that got the temperature down, etc.
There is a test for West Nile virus but it is time sensitive and can be given too early or too late.