According to William K. Reisen, PhD, of the Center for Vectorborne Diseases at the University of California, Davis, the number of people infected with the West Nile virus is getting three times bigger this season. Reisen and his colleagues stated that "a dramatic increase in home foreclosures and abandoned homes [has] produced urban landscapes dotted with an expanded number of new mosquito habitats."

Roger Nasci, PhD, chief of the CDC's arboviral disease branch also added that these happenings, even if unrelated to every people and every place, can actually cause a big impact on public’s health life. "This does emphasize that there are a number of complicating factors -- which many people would not anticipate to be disease risks -- that come into play," Nasci said.

James Hughes, MD, associate director of the Southeastern Center for Emerging Biologic threats and professor of medicine and public health at Emory University said that the study which is being made on the people affected by the virus is a “carefully done study that relates a rather dramatic increase in West Nile cases to changes in the environment in an urban setting."

The notes taken by Reisen’s research team concluded that it shouldn’t have been such a good season for the West Nile virus in Bakersfield. The winter and spring were so dry that they should have reduced the number of the mosquitoes. Last August, there were 303,879 foreclosure filings in the U.S. California's Kern County.

Reisen’s report appears in the November issue of the CDC journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.