Aerial spraying to stop spread of West Nile virus in Dallas

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West Nile Virus has hit Dallas Texas dairy -- authorities are now spraying pesticides from the air in an effort to.

Stop the potentially deadly disease from spreading even further now.

There are at least seventeen deaths reported across the state ten of them in Dallas coming along.

I think we they get rooms he goes and obviously causing.

Lot of sickness and then some deaths so Laporte it's killing people that's enough you know -- you know anymore.

-- -- never seen this bad.

West Nile Virus is carried by mosquitoes in this could be the worst outbreak of -- virus in Texas history.

Casey Stegall is live in Dallas in one of the hardest hit areas it's getting sprayed Casey.

Yeah great more than 400 state confirmed cases of West Nile Virus here in Texas and this is not a problem unique to the lone star state backed take a look at the map and you can see.

That are really is cropping up all over the place Mississippi reporting 59 cases.

52 in Louisiana 49 in Oklahoma and 32 in South Dakota those -- the top five states.

Nationwide some 26 people have died.

All of these numbers according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Texas is on -- to have the worst outbreak of the virus in state history the reason we understand an early spring and extremely hot summer.

And doctors say -- doctors at the CDC say.

That this hot weather both increases the mosquito population.

And it also causes more of this deadly virus to be carried in the mosquitoes -- if you can believe that Greg did the aerial spraying.

Work so far any way to tell.

What we don't know because last night was the first night for its they dropped pesticide out of the back of an airplane over some of the zip codes that are hardest hit -- -- standing.

In one of those an area known as right white rock lake here in Dallas last night two different planes taking -- the -- you can see from this video.

About a 106000.

Acres were sprayed.

More areas scheduled for tonight and into the weekend and Greg you ask about the success rate.

Will they say that this success rate of killing off the infected mosquitoes with this method is much higher.

Then traditional ground spraying listen.

I know that last year after an application in Kentucky that we did after the flooding there.

We -- an 88% kill rate in Boston I think they just had something along lines of sixty some percent so both of those are very strong indicators that you're gonna knock down significant portions of the population.

Now there was a large group of residents here in the Dallas Fort Worth area that we're concerned about this aerial spraying health concerns.

However the scientists both with the CDC and the Environmental Protection Agency trying to ensure the community and the public.

That this in fact is safe and it is very necessary at this point Greg you're standing in a dangerous place that'll be after bug spray on.

-- -- got it in the truck out of what we'll put it all on its not gonna do any good in the truck.

Stacy thanks very -- -- it.

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Aerial spraying to stop spread of West Nile virus in Dallas

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