1st Kentuckian Dies of West Nile Virus

A man who was hospitalized with West Nile encephalitis died this week, Kentucky health authorities said Tuesday. It was the state’s first confirmed case of the disease in a human.

Lab tests suggest that Missouri and Texas also may have suffered their first deaths from the West Nile virus, while in Mississippi, health officials on Tuesday reported a third death from the disease.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta confirmed that the Kentucky man had the West Nile virus, Cabinet for Health Services spokesman Gil Lawson said.

The victim was described only as an 84-year-old man with “multiple health problems” who had been hospitalized for several days and died Monday.

Kentucky health officials had said the widespread presence of birds and horses with West Nile virus in the state meant that a human case could be expected.

In Missouri and Texas, officials were awaiting confirmation from the CDC that the cases there were West Nile.

A 75-year-old woman in St. Louis died Aug. 7, and Missouri health officials said an independent lab test showed that she had tested positive for West Nile. She was identified as Cora Walton by grandson Sean Walton, a technician in Associated Press’ St. Louis office.

In Houston, a 52-year-old woman died Friday. Ethel Menefee was hospitalized Aug. 8, according to her sister, Erma Nauling.

“Our lab put her in the probable category [for West Nile], so we feel like it is going to be confirmed,” said Kathy Barton, spokeswoman for the Houston Department of Health and Human Services.

Mississippi health officials declined to release the gender or age of the latest victim there, saying only that the person had been hospitalized with West Nile encephalitis.

Nationwide, the CDC has reported 12 U.S. deaths this year from West Nile virus, eight of them in Louisiana. As of Tuesday, 253 human cases of the virus had been reported to the CDC this year in 11 states and the District of Columbia.

West Nile first appeared in the United States in 1999, when seven people infected with it in New York died. It is transmitted to humans through mosquito bites.