The state health department will be distributing two-thousand cans of tick and mosquito repellant to local health departments to fight a couple of pests that can be dangerous.
Ticks are at their most active at this time of year and West Nile Virus cases are likely to show up among humans sometime next month. The virus is carried by mosquitoes. The health department’s Alyce Turner says we’re at the height of tick season. One person , a seven-year old child, has died of a tick-borne disease.
One-thousand cans of repellant containing DEET already have been distributed in the St.Louis area, where one-third of the West Nile cases showed up last year. The department confirmed the first virus-carrying mosquito in that area last week. She says the disease will built up in the bird and mosquito population before it spreads to humans. She expects human cases to start appearing in late July. Although the disease peaks during that period, it can still appear until the first significant frost.
She says the threat of ticks will lessen when the weather gets hotter, but they’ll come back when things are cooler in the fall. They won’t go away entirely. They just are more active when it’s cooler. She says people and animals can pick up ticks in any green space.