Wharton advises residents use an insect repellent, wear long sleeve shirts and pants outside and also limit the use of fragrance or perfumes, especially at dusk or during nighttime hours when many mosquitoes tend to be active.
In addition, people should regularly change the water in kids’ pools, bird baths and other sources of standing water, where mosquitoes lay their eggs.
Mosquito larvae and pupae usually cannot survive without water, Wharton said.
Gabriel Jones, epidemiologist at the Clark County Combined Health District, said the county hasn’t tested for West Nile yet but also hasn’t seen any human infections.
“It’s still early. We usually see most cases later in the summer,” Jones said.
There have been eight reported human cases of West Nile infections so far this year in Cuyahoga, Franklin, Hamilton, Lucas and Lorain counties, according to the Ohio Department of Health, which reported 11 human West Nile virus cases in 2014; 24 in 2013; and 122 in 2012.
While deaths are rare, the state health department earlier this week that a 91-year-old man died of a West Nile infection in Williams County in the northwest corner of the state, although he had previously been hospitalized with encephalitis and may have had a compromised immune system.
He was the state’s first human fatality from West Nile virus this year.
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