Recent cold weather has suppressed risk. Mosquito infection rates seem to have stalled. Although risk has begun to fall, approximately 1 in 5 cases is transmitted after this week, historically, and individuals should still take reasonable precautions while outdoors.
Most recent weekly forecast
Most recent seasonal forecast
Based on all data available August 21st, we expect to see 54 cases in SD in 2017. This forecast was driven down from last week's prediction of 62 cases by a string of cold weather. We appear to one week past the peak of the season, but this does not mean that risk is gone - simply that it will begin to decline towards the end of the season. This is still a substantial year with dozens of diagnosed WNV cases and probably hundreds which are subclinical and never diagnosed.
Sponsors
South Dakota State University has partnered with the South Dakota Department of Health to implement a program of West Nile virus (WNV) research that will support public health decision makers at the state level and mosquito control programs at the local level. Major activities include mosquito surveillance and testing for WNV, monitoring environmental risk factors using data from earth observing satellites, and using this information to predict the risk of WNV to humans across the state. This work is supported in part by a grant from the NASA Applied Sciences Public Health and Air Quality Program (NNX15AF74G).