Commissioner Christine Grant
I am pleased to share with you today a preview of New Jersey's Public Health Response plan to deal with the West Nile Virus. Governor Whitman has made early and continued readiness a priority. And I'm pleased to report we're ready.
The West Nile virus was detected in the Western Hemisphere for the first time last summer and fall. There are several questions for which scientists don't yet know the answers. For example, it is unknown whether the live virus can persist over the winter. However, we must presume that a very real possibility exists that there will be a recurrence of the virus in birds and mosquitoes in the northeast states this spring.
In New Jersey, we are prepared to manage this potential public health problem directly.
While the mosquitoes may have gone into hibernation during the winter, we didn't.
My message to the public is "Do not be alarmed. We are prepared."
We are doing everything possible to protect the public, to educate the public about this disease and to communicate accurate information to the public as quickly as possible.
Working together with departments of Environmental Protection and Agriculture, the state Mosquito Control Commission, CDC, and local public health and mosquito control agencies, we have developed a plan.
The four -point plan includes:
The plan will be implemented by many partners representing the public health, medical, vector control and animal health communities as well as requiring a continued state of alert by physicians and hospital personnel. In fact, there are several hundred people who will be focusing on protecting the public from this disease.
Joining us today are representatives from DEP - Assistant Commissioner Cari Wild and Robert Kent, director of the air spray program. And from the Department of Agriculture we have Dr. Nancy Halpern, Deputy Director of Animal Health and Dr. Robert Eisner, laboratory director.
Before they describe their activities, I'd like to remind all about the West Nile virus itself and then describe the role of the Department of Health and Senior Services.
We will present the overall plan and then we'll take your questions at the end of the presentations.
West Nile is an arboviral disease transmitted though the bite of a mosquito that has picked up the virus by feeding on an infected bird host. West Nile is not directly transmitted from birds to humans or from person to person.
The virus was first detected in New York City and surrounding New York counties late summer of 1999. There were seven deaths in the New York area caused by this disease. Infected symptomatic people tend to have flu-like symptoms. Most people recover from the infection.
But certain populations, mainly the elderly and those with weak immune systems, are more at risk to have a serious illness from the infection and in a few cases die.
There have been no human cases of West Nile virus detected in New Jersey. However as most of you know who followed this disease last year, the presence of the virus was detected in 74 bird specimens, mainly crows, from 16 counties. The virus was also found in two mosquito pools in Hudson County. - that's two pools out of 5500 tested in the state.
I'd like to talk about some of the developments since our first contact with the virus last fall and the role of the Department in the overall plan. Then I'll turn this over to our state epidemiologist Dr. Eddy Bresnitz. And then to our colleagues from DEP and Agriculture.
We learned a great deal last fall when the West Nile virus surfaced in New York City. Certainly such a public health threat reinforces the importance of all agencies working together to protect the public. As a result of that experience, the Department and our partners have organized an ongoing West Nile Virus Working Group which meets regularly to discuss the plan and implementation as well as report on-going activities in neighboring states. It is very important that we be up to date on all aspects of this virus.
The Department of Health and Senior Services will be the lead agency on the West Nile virus in New Jersey and coordinate and manage all the activities we will be talking about today.
We will be working with local health officials to strengthen the use of our electronic communications systems and our health alert network to share and receive information with local health departments and mosquito control agencies throughout the state. The Department will rely on the information system called LINCS, Local Information Network Communications System, which ties us to local health departments through the developing Health Alert Network.
We will continue to educate the public about this disease and help the public understand what common sense personal precautions to take to avoid exposure to mosquitoes. We are developing and updating complete health education materials for the public and the medical community on ways in which individuals can reduce their risk of being bitten by mosquitoes. We will build on the materials developed last fall including fact sheets and periodic updates on our web site www.state.nj.us/health. Some local agencies have been working on materials to distribute such as the Monmouth County Mosquito Control Commission which recently published a very good brochure on West Nile.
Accurate, easily-understood information should reduce the potential for misunderstanding or alarm. It is the Department's goal to provide useful information so that residents and visitors can take simple and reasonable precautions to reduce their risk and feel comfortable in doing so with minimal inconvenience.
Common personal protection is extremely important. We know that using mosquito repellent and wearing long sleeved shirts and pants while outdoors, particularly at dusk and dawn hours, reduces the chance of being bitten. Don't mow the grass or cut brush in mosquito-infested areas without protecting yourself and your family. Get rid of stagnant pools of water around your home or in gutters to eliminate a potential breeding ground for mosquitoes.
We are in constant communication with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and our neighboring state health departments. Our state epidemiologist Dr. Eddy Bresnitz and Senior Assistant Commissioner Jim Blumenstock and the staff are fully integrated into the national surveillance team.
In December, the Department of Health and Senior Services on behalf of all our partners, applied to the CDC for a $250,000 grant that would provide funds for expanded services in the areas of human disease surveillance, animal and mosquito surveillance, laboratory services and public education.
I am very optimistic that CDC will look favorably on our grant application. We are discussing with CDC expanding our laboratory capacity so we can do some of the testing both to detect the presence of the virus and if need be, test for human infection.
And finally, as part of the plan to strengthen the communications network, we will be meeting with public health and mosquito control experts throughout the state tomorrow to flesh out some of the details of our overall plan and make sure everyone understands what is expected of them.
That is an overall look at what the Department of Health and Senior Services will be doing. Now I'd like to turn to one other responsibility for the department: Human disease surveillance.
Certainly, part of the West Nile virus public health response plan is to put in place ways to detect and keep track of the appearance of the virus in humans. I would like to introduce our state Epidemiologist Dr. Eddy Bresnitz to talk about what we will be doing in that area.
Eddy Bresnitz
Introduce DEP Assistant Commissioner Cari Wild to discuss mosquito surveillance and control activities.
Introduce Dr. Nancy Halpern, Deputy Director of Animal Health in the state Agriculture Department.
Summary:
As you can see, we have a comprehensive plan to detect and track any appearance of the West Nile virus in New Jersey. It involves many partners working together from this department, agriculture and DEP to the state Mosquito Control Commission, local health officers and county mosquito control programs and CDC.
The four point -plan includes:
We hope the virus does not reappear in New Jersey or anywhere else but if it does, we're ready.
We'd be happy to take questions now.
