Deacon, a bio-consultant with the Thunder Bay District Health Unit, thinks the disease runs on a 50-year cycle. He points to Israel, which had an outbreak in 1951 and then another in 2002, as evidence.
Standing outside of the Health Unit building on Balmoral Street, sporting a fisherman’s hat that accents his long grey beard, Deacon compares the disease to a campfire – once it has expended all of its fuel, through birds, horse and susceptible humans, it had nowhere to go.
"I reckon it’s a 50 years cycle for the disease," he says.
At one time, the threat of West Nile virus seemed to be everywhere. News reports tracked the progress of the disease, which is transferred to humans through mosquitoes, and dead birds were counted and tested to see where the virus was going.
Today, those daily headlines are gone.
There has been one reported case of a human contracting the disease in Ontario. And even that case, coming out of the Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Health Unit, comes with a footnote as the person who contracted it was traveling in India and China.
There are still some mosquitoes turning up positive for the disease in Ontario, but not in large numbers.
So far this year five mosquito pools in the province have tested positive for West Nile.
"It’s still present in the area, but it’s not a serious issue," Deacon says. "We’re just getting the last few susceptible individuals (contracting West Nile)."
The disease was at its height in the province during 2006. It traveled through North America before changing to a different type of mosquito to carry it through the Prairie Provinces
Northwestern Ontario doesn’t have the type of mosquito that carries the disease, Deacon adds.
"That’s still one of the joys of living in the great white north. We get mosquitoes but we don’t get the right, or is that the wrong, kind," Deacon says.
In the district of Thunder Bay, crows were the main target of the virus in 2004. Fourteen of the black birds tested positive that year.
But the risk to human health in the area was always viewed as minimal.
Mosquitoes in the Toronto area have recently tested positive for the West Nile Virus for the first time this year.
Toronto's first West Nile outbreak was in 2001.
In 2002, there were 163 cases and 11 deaths from the virus. No deaths have been recorded in Toronto since 2006.
