By McKay, Betsy
Wall Street Journal
07/01/03

Federal and state health officials are gearing up for a summer of disease, with new illnesses spreading rapidly around the country and fears of others gaining ground: monkeypox and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) are still rare, but Lyme disease and West Nile virus seem to have become yearly battles. West Nile has spread to 44 states after having appeared in the United States just four years ago, and last year it infected over 4,100 Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); this year, the agency believes the virus will affect far more people, especially as it moves westward into California, which with a hot summer and dense population is likely to be a haven for disease-spreading mosquitoes. Another concern is Lyme disease, which is spread by deer ticks and which infected 18,000 people last year, primarily in the Northeast, the mid-Atlantic, and Wisconsin and Minnesota. Other diseases that worry the CDC include Japanese encephalitis, an illness also transmitted via mosquitoes that infects as many as 50,000 Asians every year and can cause 60 percent of its patients to die, but it has not yet reached the shores of North America.