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Park County health officer urges mosquito surveillance after West Nile case; volunteers and grants eyed to start pilot
Summary
Dr. Aaron Billen briefed commissioners on West Nile virus trends and proposed a county mosquito surveillance pilot; he volunteered to manage traps next summer and staff discussed grant funding options and volunteer capacity to run five monitoring sites.
Park County's chief health officer, Dr. Aaron Billen, told commissioners the county should start a mosquito surveillance program after a neuroinvasive West Nile case this year and an increase in state cases.
"In 2025, we have had 14 reported cases of West Nile virus in the state of Wyoming," Billen said, adding that Park County had one neuroinvasive human case treated in Cody this year. He explained the surveillance workflow — CDC light traps baited with dry ice to attract Culex mosquitoes, morphological separation of Culex, pooling of captures, and PCR testing of pools by the Wyoming Department of Health laboratory in Cheyenne — and said identifying local virus presence would allow health officials to issue targeted…
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