Does Southern Nevada need to do more to prevent mosquitoes?

LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — With cooler temperatures here, that means mosquito season is thankfully coming to an end.

Following up on a story I covered on Monday when I stopped at UNLV to talk to experts about how bad this past mosquito season was, on Tuesday I wanted to find out what can be done to help fight the problem.

University experts showed me the studies they are doing and explained how bad the problem got this past summer.

This year, we saw a huge uptick in human West Nile virus cases at 26, and we also saw a boom in the population of the Aedes aegypti mosquito that was not here in Southern Nevada prior to 2017.

Joe: If this mosquito is not going anywhere and you see that population boom this year, one can only expect next summer we will do it again.

“100%. The issue, Joe, is that there is no coordinated mosquito abatement district here in Southern Nevada,” said Vivek Raman, who is an environmental health supervisor with the Southern Nevada Health District.

Raman said that in a typical year, they get around 90 to 100 complaints during the peak mosquito season. This year, they had more than 500 complaints.

He said there are some departments, such as Public Works or County Vector Control, that are able to do some mitigation efforts, but not one for the entire valley like you would see in other cities or counties in California, Utah, or Arizona.

“This is very new to Southern Nevada. When you think about Aedes aegypti — only five, six years it’s been introduced now — to see it spread across the entire valley just goes to show how we need to look at what other communities have done and pick the best parts of what their programs are and the best parts of how they get funding,” Raman said.

He said the Southern Nevada Health District is looking into plans for the future on their end, and the experts I spoke to at UNLV agree — more can be done and they hope their data and studies from the summer can help.

WATCH | Why did the mosquito population boom this year? Experts weigh in and are looking for answers

Why did the local mosquito population boom this year? Experts weigh in