A 41-year-old with the so-called Nile fever, a disease caused by the ‘West Nile’ virus, has been hospitalized since 31 July in the infectious diseases department of the Foggia polyclinic. His condition is stable. The virus is contracted through an infected mosquito bite. An outbreak of positive insects had been identified in recent months in the area north of Barletta.
The 41-year-old had a first access to the emergency room of the Cerignola hospital with fever, general malaise, vomiting and skin rash, and was then hospitalized in the infectious disease department in Foggia when the neurological symptoms worsened, i.e. numbness, confusion and drowsiness.
At the moment, explains Professor Sergio Lo Caputo, who is following the story, his “conditions are stable and slightly improving”. “The virus – he adds – is transmitted only through the bite of an infected mosquito, and is not transmissible from man, even infected, to another man: the only form of prevention is to fight the vector, therefore with environmental disinfestation measures”. The virus, he adds, “has an incubation time of three to fifteen days, but the estimated time for symptomatic manifestation is generally one week.
In 80 percent of cases those who are bitten by an infected mosquito show no symptoms, therefore they are completely asymptomatic, only 1 percent can show neurological symptoms and develop encephalitis and the deaths, almost non-existent, are attributable to people elderly and with previous pathologies or in conditions of immunosuppression”.
In recent times, the West Nile virus is also spreading in western countries due to climate change that leads to a tropicalization of the climate. Already in recent months, recalls Professor Lo Caputo, “the Puglia region had signaled the presence of this type of mosquito in the area north of Barletta, for which this had led to a series of prevention measures such as the control of plasma bags in hospitals”.
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