The Mosquito Program has four components:

• Education and Source Reduction. This component consists of cultural practices such as applying repellants and reducing mosquito breeding sites.
• Surveillance entails trapping of mosquitoes to determine if the encephalitis virus is present.
• Larviciding is the daytime treatment of standing water areas that breed mosquitoes.
• Adulticiding is the evening spraying of residential streets to reduce the number of adult mosquitoes.
  
  The surveillance and larviciding components normally start in April while the adulticiding operations start in June. All operations are usually completed in September. These efforts are designed to reduce the possibility of an encephalitis outbreak.

Spraying will begin at 8:30 p.m. and continue until completed.  In the event of bad weather, the spray schedule may be modified.  An updated schedule will be available by noon on the following day by calling (330) 926-5667.

The Summit County Health Department is no longer collecting birds for West Nile Virus testing; however, SCHD will take reports of dead birds for tracking purposes.  The Health Department is now concentrating its efforts on collecting mosquitoes to determine the level of activity for the West Nile Virus in Summit County.  Further questions or concerns can be addressed by calling
(330) 923-8856.