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William K Reisen, Twenty Years of West Nile Virus in the United States: Introduction, Journal of Medical Entomology, Volume 56, Issue 6, November 2019, Page 1447, https://doi.org/10.1093/jme/tjz130
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West Nile virus (WNV, Flaviviridae: Flavivirus) was first isolated from the West Nile District of Uganda in 1937 (Smithburn et al. 1940), after which it remained relatively unstudied until outbreaks of febrile illness, mostly among children, were documented in Israel (Bernkopf et al. 1953) and then in Egypt in the Nile Delta (Taylor et al. 1956). Although the distribution of this virus and sporadic disease subsequently was documented over a wide geographic range (Hayes 1989), it was not considered a substantial health problem until it invaded the United States (CDC 1999) and then the New World. Over the next 20 years, WNV became fully established and a major human, veterinary and wildlife health problem within every state of the continental United States, caused major outbreaks in southern Canada, and has been documented throughout the rest of the New World as well as recently causing outbreaks of human disease in Europe.