West Nile Money Held Up in Washington
By Marty Toohey
WASHINGTON, Oct. 20, 2002–The West Nile virus has infected 13 Connecticut people and knocked countless birds from the sky this year. Meanwhile, relief money is languishing in Congress and will almost certainly stay there until after the November elections.
An appropriations bill stuck in the federal government’s budget logjam could send $350,000 to Connecticut researchers studying the virus, and a bill that would authorize the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to give substantial grants almost definitely won’t make it out of committee before the Senate adjourns.
The CDC bill, introduced by Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.), would allow the national health agency to make loans that would match state funding for the virus. The matching-fund grant would supplement standard grants from the CDC, such as a recent $200,000 grant to Connecticut for West Nile.
But the House adjourned Wednesday night until after the Nov. 5 elections, and the Senate could do so any time, so Dodd’s bill probably won’t even make it out of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee before November.
The $350,000 is part of the House version of the agriculture appropriations bill, one of the 13 federal spending bills that finance the federal government. The money would go to the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, which has studied the virus and its carriers in its labs since the first case recorded in the United States, in 1999.
But it’s still uncertain if the money will ever make it to the station. The House hasn’t approved its version, and the Senate’s version doesn’t even include the grant. Both chambers must agree on a final bill before it goes to the president for signing.
“If it’s delayed a couple of months, it probably won’t affect us,” said John Anderson, director of the station. “If it’s eliminated, that’s another matter.”
The station currently has what Anderson describes as a “relatively small lab jam-packed with equipment,” like biosafety hoods that allow him and the other two researchers to work directly with the virus, studying how it’s transferred and whether it’s mutating.
The station will soon open a new building with enhanced facilities, but if the bill doesn’t pass, the support staff will be cut back significantly. The staff runs the lab equipment, collects field samples and distributes pesticides to keep mosquito populations down.
That staff helped the station isolate the West Nile virus in a Connecticut mosquito within a few days of the first case’s detection in New York. Since then, the station has identified strains of West Nile in 14 of the state’s 42 varieties of mosquitoes, and is studying how the naturally occurring virus jumps between different breeds and between animals.
Those mosquitoes have proved resistant to pesticides as well, Anderson said.
And although winter is coming and the mosquito season is nearly over, Anderson warned that West Nile won’t go away.
“When spring comes, the mosquitoes will come out of dormancy in large numbers,” he said. “The number of humans affected continues to rise, and more than likely we’ll still have the West Nile virus” once winter ends.
Nationwide, the virus has killed 164 as of Wednesday night and has been diagnosed in 3,052 others, according to the CDC.
The state Department of Environmental Protection maintains a Mosquito Management Program, which has a mosquito information hotline at 1-866-968-5463.
Published in The New Britain Herald, in Connecticut.
