- More than 150 Colorado blood donors initially tested
positive for West Nile, an indication that more than 35,000 people statewide
might be infected with the mosquito-borne virus.
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- Since July 1, 152 donors at Bonfils Blood Center tested
positive for West Nile, said spokeswoman Paige Van Riper.
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- Follow-up tests confirmed 88 percent had the virus.
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- The rate of positive tests accelerated sharply in August
- 111 positives out of 16,000 donors. Assuming 88 percent of them are confirmed
positive, slightly less than 1 percent of August donors had West Nile.
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- Extrapolated to Colorado's population of 4.3 million,
that means about 35,000 people statewide may have the virus in their bodies.
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- Not that they all get sick.
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- An estimated 70 percent to 80 percent of infected people
do not display any symptoms, health officials say.
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- "I can believe, based on what we've seen, that it
could be 35,000," said Dr. William Dickey, president of the Bonfils
Blood Center. "Our donors probably do represent a cross-section of
Coloradans."
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- That wouldn't surprise all the people who say they know
at least one person who believes he or she has West Nile. Colorado leads
the nation in cases and deaths this year.
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- But John Pape, epidemiologist with Colorado Department
of Public Health and Environment, cautions there are too many unknowns
to make assumptions.
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- He disagrees, for example, that blood donors are a random
sampling of Coloradans, saying donors tend to be older and predominantly
male.
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- Still, other comparisons indicate that there may be even
more than 35,000 Coloradans infected, and that by the end of the year it
could exceed 100,000.
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- For example, Ohio's Cuyahoga County, which has about
one-third the population of Colorado, had 219 cases and 10 deaths from
West Nile last year.
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- At the end of the year, Cuyahoga County tested 1,200
randomly selected residents and found an infection rate of 5 percent, said
John Romano, member of the Cuyahoga County Board of Health.
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- Health officials do not have a good handle on how many
Americans are infected.
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- But if Colorado's infection rate is 5 percent at the
end of the year, that would mean more than 200,000 state residents will
have been infected.
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- Pape said the comparisons are tenuous, because northern
Ohio has different species of mosquitoes that carry West Nile than does
Colorado.
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- Still, he said, "I think there are infection rates
of 5 percent in some towns on the Eastern Plains. And there probably are
areas of the northern Front Range where they have infection rates that
are that high."
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- Health officials estimate that one in five infected people
will feel some symptoms of West Nile, although interviews with Bonfils
donors whose blood had tested positive found that some 35 percent of them
felt ill shortly after giving.
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- - scanlon@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-2897
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- 2003 © The E.W. Scripps Co.
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- http://www.insidedenver.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_2221391,00.html
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