COLUMBIA, SC (WIS) -
More than 1,100 cases of West Nile Virus have been reported in people nationwide according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In South Carolina, that number is 15, which is nearly triple the amount of human cases ever reported in the state.
Five of those 15 cases are in Midlands' counties and five more cases are in surrounding counties. So how likely is it that you will contract some form of the West Nile Virus?
"For everyone one of these cases that you hear, there's probably a hundred thousand or so also infected," said Dr. Helmut Albrecht, an infectious disease physician at Palmetto Health.
If that's the case, that would mean nearly 1,500,000 people would have already been exposed to the virus in South Carolina. So where's the panic?
"Of the people that get bitten by an infected mosquito, most will never develop any disease," said Dr. Albrecht.
Dr. Albrecht says some who get West Nile Virus may wind up with symptoms like a mild fever or a headache.
"They just never get seriously ill, or their body deals with the infection like you would deal with most viruses," added Albrecht.
As with most viruses, there's no medicinal cure for West Nile. Albrecht says most of the time the symptoms will run their course, but in extremely rare cases people can get desperately, and potentially fatally ill.
"People that have this meningitis or these brain infections, that's not subtle," said Dr. Albrecht. "People know that there's something really wrong."
Of the 15 current South Carolina cases of West Nile Virus, five cases are classified as encephalitis and meningitis cases (infections of the brain or the area around the brain and spinal cord). Five other cases were actually discovered when the person tried to donate blood. "A couple of people we identified, they had no symptoms whatsoever, but they donated blood and we found that they had the virus in their blood stream," said Dr. Albrecht.
Dr. Albrecht says if you're not feeling well, it doesn't mean that you have to get tested for the virus. Only when symptoms persist or become extreme do doctors say it's to head to the emergency room.
According to the Department of Health and Environmental Control, mild symptoms include fever, headache, body aches and occasionally a skin rash on the truck of the body and swollen lymph glands.
Serious symptoms of the West Nile Virus Neuroinvasive Disease include headache, high fever, neck stiffness, stupor, confusion, coma, tremors, convulsions, muscle weakness and paralysis. http://www.scdhec.gov/environment/envhealth/pests/mosquitoes-wnv.htm
"It doesn't mean anything to get checked out early in this disease," said Dr. Albrecht. "There's no treatment for this anyway, but people that progress to the point where they get a stiff neck, where their spouses or grandchildren tell them something is really wrong, they need to go get checked out.
Dr. Albrecht adds in those extreme cases, doctors do what's called supportive treatment for the person's organs. However, again, they can only treat the symptoms, not the virus. He says in most of those cases, the person lives, but sometimes it means permanent damage to their motor functions.
The CDC says 1200 people have died since West Nile Virus was first introduced in the United States in 1999. This year there have been 41 deaths because of serious forms of the virus. There have been no reports of fatalities in South Carolina yet this year.
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