For the first time in years, Orange County will spray pesticide in wetlands areas to kill off mosquito larvae that could be carrying diseases harmful to humans, like West Nile virus. This year’s heavy rains in Southern California brought a bumper crop of our most-hated insects.
In the lab at the Orange County Mosquito and Vector Control District, lab technician Sokanary Sun uses tweezers to fill a vial with dead mosquitoes.
“So here’s one pool of 50,” Sun said as she dropped the last of a heap of tiny corpses into the vial. The mosquitoes were caught in a trap at a Brea cemetery.
“We test them for all three viruses, which include West Nile Virus, western equine encephalomyelitis and St. Louis encephalitis,” she said.
Those last two viruses are pretty rare in SoCal, but Orange County has seen an increase in West Nile virus. Nineteen people have died since 2014 after being infected with the virus, according to Mary-Joy Cuburn, a spokeswoman for the vector control district.