Armed with a GPS-system and a bicycle, 27-year-old Lauren Murphy is on the front-lines in the war against West Nile.
"People have been concerned about me poisoning them. They think I'm counting things. I get a lot of people concerned I'm ticketing their car," says Murphy.
The nursing student rides her bike to more than 800 catch basins in one day, dropping larvicide in to control the mosquito-borne virus.
This year, the mosquitos are out with a vengeance because of a late spring. Different species of mosquitos usually come out staggered. This year, they’ve come out all at once. The hotter weather many have been waiting for doesn’t help.
“The hotter it is, the higher the virus will replicate within the mosquitos and the more infected mosquitos we'll capture,” says Mark Ardis, Project Manager at GDG Environment the company contracted by the City of Ottawa.
The company is also setting up 29 mosquito traps across the city so experts can test the bugs for the virus.
Last year, out of 702 pool samples, only 17 had West Nile. There were four confirmed human cases of West Nile in Ottawa.
Symptoms can range from flu-like like fever and headaches to more severe causing brain inflammation, paralysis, even death.
Ottawa public health suggests people wear long sleeves and pants at dawn and dusk, try to stay indoors and remove all standing water from their property.
‘We advocate prevention and people do have to be vigilant,” says Craig Calder of Ottawa Public Health.
The City of Ottawa larvicides 115,000 catch basins, three times in a summer.
With a report from CTV’s John Hua
