West Nile worries worsen, new virus details kept secret

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- West Nile worries worsen, new virus details kept secret

Fresno County health officials are issuing a West Nile warning as the virus is spreading with unprecedented speed this year. Ten new cases have popped up just in the last week.

Mosquitoes are causing major illness and major worries throughout California in what is quickly becoming the worst year ever for West Nile.

An area of Fresno County near McKinley & Valentine could possibly be of great concern. You can see a ditch with some standing water and just on the other side of that ditch is a man suffering from West Nile virus.

David Renovado's family built him a wheelchair ramp to help him get inside his home. He returned from the hospital a couple weeks after he remembers being bitten.

Once a 291-pound man, the 60-year-old is down almost 30 pounds because he hasn't been able to eat more than a couple bites at a time.

"It's been really hard seeing a man who is so vital and he gets around and he moves around every day and he's always doing something, to where he's gotten to this point where he is literally bedridden," said his wife, Linda Renovado.

Linda says she'd heard about West Nile virus, but never even thought about mosquitoes until they so drastically changed her life. Now she's on constant vigil to protect her family.

"Actually, I bought a big can of that Cutter with Deet in it and I'm even sprayed down right now," she said during an interview with Action News.

Repellent is important at dawn and dusk to battle West Nile, but for another virus, you need it all day. Health officials recently discovered Fresno County's first case of Chikungunya virus, but the victim got it while traveling.

"It was in the Caribbean area," said Consolidated Mosquito Abatement District director Steve Mulligan. "They were in that area, they got bitten by an infected mosquito."

Abatement crews spotted a mosquito that can transmit Chikungunya in Clovis, near Shaw and Temperance. But health officials wouldn't tell Action News whether the victim lives anywhere near the mosquito that could carry it from the traveler to new victims, citing privacy laws.