By Paul Sperry
© 2002 WorldNetDaily.com

WASHINGTON – Over the past 18 months, health officials here have found 407 dead birds infected with the West Nile virus, including two picked up at the White House this week.

The mosquito-borne virus is spreading so fast in nearby Fairfax County, meanwhile, that health officials have stopped testing dead birds. Every quadrant of the county now has the virus.

Fifty birds – two blue jays and the rest crows – have already tested positive in the county so far this year, an official told WorldNetDaily. That's up from 34 for all of last year.

And neighboring Maryland has led the nation in West Nile virus cases, a few of which have resulted in human deaths.

What's behind the Beltway outbreak? No one knows for sure.

Experts don't even know how the North African virus, first discovered in New York in 1999, entered the U.S., although theories, such as bioterrorism, abound (even though the virus is not known to be an efficient bioweapons agent).

"They don't know how it started," said Dennis Hill, spokesman for the Fairfax County Health Department.

Some cite the National Zoo as a possible breeding ground. It's in the Northwest part of Washington, where the city's West Nile virus cases have clustered.

But zoo officials report only about a dozen bird deaths.

Many of the infected birds have been found in neighborhoods around the former headquarters of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, which has been developing a vaccine for West Nile virus. The infectious-diseases lab moved to Silver Spring, Md., three years ago.

But lab microbiologists still do research at the main post in Washington, which includes a hospital with an infectious-diseases clinic and lab on the 6th floor, Army officials say. Other visitors include researchers from the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah, where the Army has tested biological weapons agents including anthrax, tularemia and encephalitis.

Walter Reed Army Medical Center, at 6900 Georgia Ave., N.W., is in the city's Ward 1, where many of the virus-carrying birds have been picked up. In fact, many have been found at sites along Georgia Avenue, N.W., says D.C. Health Department spokeswoman Vera Jackson.

The Walter Reed institute is developing a vaccine for West Nile virus that comprises dengue virus with certain genes replaced by West Nile virus genes. Monkey trials were expected to begin earlier this year.

The virus – which has spread from New York to Florida and has been reported as far west as Louisiana, where it has claimed lives – is expected to be in all 50 states within the next two years, Hill says.