Video: Fighting The Mosquito Bite

EUPORA and STURGIS, Miss. (WCBI) – There’s growing concerns about the spread of Zika and West Nile Virus, and towns in the area are helping people fight the mosquito bite.

Hinds County is seeing a spike in the number of West Nile carrying mosquitoes, and other towns want to make sure they don’t see that.

Mississippi summers are hot, humid, and a buzzing paradise for mosquitoes.

“Once a mosquito is transmitted with a particular type of disease, if they find it in one area, it’s almost impossible to contain because Mississippi is such a rural area, and we’re in the south, in the American south. It’s just prime mosquito breeding area.”

Eupora Mayor Dan Burchfield is very concerned about disease carrying mosquitoes, but the town doesn’t spray for them.

“In many cases, the poisons that are used in the spraying for mosquitoes are actually more likely to cause negative impacts on the community more so than the probability of the mosquito.”

Eupora takes other measures instead of spraying.

“We have made a conscious effort to double our emphasis on ditching during the winter time, to make sure that all the drainage ditches that we have are free flowing. We’ve changed out culverts.”

Every town doesn’t spray, but Sturgis Mayor Walter Turner says spraying help prevents anything bad flying into town.

“West Nile and Zika Virus is a bad thing, and anything hazardous to humans of course needs to be looked at, but I think it’ll be over ruled by the hazards by not doing it.”

Sturgis says they’ll keep doing the same thing to fight mosquitoes, even with more virus carrying mosquitoes showing up in the state.

“I don’t know about more spraying. We just want to be sure there’s adequate spraying out by working through the county to see what role they’re going to play, and as mayor, doing what I can inside the city limits. I don’t think we’ve reached any epidemic portions or anything like that, but we certainly want to avoid that.”

There have been 4 West Nile cases reported in the state so far this year, and more could be seen since August and September are popular months for West Nile.