In a damp, dungeonlike cell beneath a crumbling military fortress in northeast Queens, Dr. Waheed Bajwa and his team were counting sleeping mosquitoes and trying to divine the future.
Soon the mosquitoes would awaken and secrete rafts of goo into puddles of standing water and lay hundreds of eggs onto them that would hatch into larvae that would feed and grow up and mate and lay eggs of their own — until sometime in late summer one of their great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughters would bite a sparrow infected with West Nile virus and then, perhaps, a human.
But that day was months off.
On this balmy morning in mid-February, Dr. Bajwa, a mild-mannered, methodical, relentless medical entomologist who has spent 21 years heading the city Health Department’s Office of Vector Surveillance and Control, was hoping to find signs that the coming summer would be merciful.
Last year saw the highest number of human West Nile cases since 1999, when the virus first appeared in the Western Hemisphere in Queens and killed four New Yorkers.
Persons:
Waheed Bajwa, Bajwa
Organizations:
Health, Vector
Locations:
Queens