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Elderly Woman Dies of West Nile Virus in Atlanta
Aired August 17, 2001 - 16:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JOIE CHEN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Late information on news that's happening now. We told you at the top of the hour there has been a death in Fulton County, which is the area around the city of Atlanta here from West Nile virus.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta from our medical unit now follows up with this. What have you learned about this, Sanjay?
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: We know that a 70- year-old woman has passed away, confirmed of West Nile virus. Now, as we have learned in the past, have been talking about West Nile virus quite a bit in the news, she was at particular risk. The elderly are at risk of the complications of West Nile virus -- we're talking about encephalitis here, inflammation of the brain.
Other people at risk are people who have coronary artery disease, diabetes, and people who are just generally immuno-compromised. Certainly the mosquitoes do transmit the virus after they bite birds. We knew that birds had had the West Nile virus here in Georgia, and likely the mosquitoes had bitten birds that had the virus, and subsequently bitten a human being.
CHEN: So, does this mean -- I understood from Carol Kinsel (ph), who is your executive producer in the medical unit -- there have been no deaths outside of the Northeast up until this point from West Nile virus? This would be the first one outside of it. Does that now mean that there is a bigger problem with the West Nile outside of the Northeast than there is up there?
GUPTA: Well, I will tell you, you know, we talked to officials at the CDC, the Center for Disease Control. They are not surprised that the virus is actually finding its way down into the East Coast. You are right, there haven't been any other deaths outside of the Northeast. The virus will continue to probably spread across the United States as far west as Ohio now and Louisiana -- Florida we know about.
Again, most of the people that get it probably will never know that they had it. There are a few people who are at greater risk, we just talked about, and they could develop this thing known as encephalitis. The virus itself is no more -- is no stronger than it had been, but it is certainly more prevalent now than it had been before.
CHEN; A good reason for concern, people should pay attention to this.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta from our medical unit, thanks for joining us.
GUPTA: Thank you.
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