Since the West Nile virus was first detected in New York in 1999, hospitalized patients in the United States have cost an estimated $778.1 million in health care expenditures and lost productivity, according to a study published online Feb. 10 in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.
Of that $778.1 million, the largest share – $449.5 million, or almost 58% – represents mean lifetime lost productivity from deaths caused by infection. Hospitalization for acute illness was estimated at $252.1 million, long-term medical care cost $27.6 million, long-term lost productivity cost $26.9 million, and short-term lost productivity (survivors only) totaled $22.1 million, investigators from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.
From 1999 through 2012, there were 37,088 cases of West Nile virus disease reported to the CDC’s ArboNET surveillance system, resulting in more than 18,000 hospitalizations and 1,529 deaths, the investigators said (Am. J. Trop. Med. Hyg. 2014 Feb. 10).
They determined the cost of initial hospitalization for 80 patients in a 2003 West Nile virus outbreak in Colorado, then calculated the cost of additional medical care and missed work for 38 patients who had 5 years of follow-up data available after the initial infection. These costs were then extrapolated to the total number of hospitalized cases in the United States since 1999.
