Denton County Is at Five West Nile Cases This Season — Four of Them Are the Serious Kind

Most mosquito bites this time of year add up to nothing. This week's Denton County Public Health report is a reason to take the ones at dusk a little more seriously.

Denton County Public Health reported the fifth human West Nile case of the season on Thursday — a resident in southeast unincorporated Denton County diagnosed with the neuroinvasive form of the disease. That makes four of the five 2026 cases the potentially fatal neuroinvasive form. The outlier is the one milder case: a Denton resident diagnosed with the non-neuroinvasive form back in July.

Neuroinvasive means the virus has reached the nervous system. Symptoms can include high fever, severe headache, neck stiffness, confusion, tremors, or sudden limb weakness. Severe central nervous system disease carries a meaningful risk of death. And there's no shortcut through it — no medicines to cure it, no vaccine to prevent it. Prevention is the only tool available.

Residents over 50 and those with compromised immune systems face higher risk of severe illness if infected. Younger, healthy people aren't off the hook either. In less than 1 percent of West Nile cases, people develop the neuroinvasive form. Four cases of it in one county in one season is a pattern worth paying attention to.

"With five confirmed human cases and continued activity of West Nile Virus mosquitoes in Denton County, we are reminding the community of the ongoing risk for contracting the virus," said Juan Rodriguez, DCPH assistant director and chief epidemiologist.

What you can actually do right now:

Drain standing water in your yard and neighborhood — birdbaths, flowerpots, clogged rain gutters, anything that collects water. Mosquitoes don't need much. They can develop in water that's been sitting still for more than three days. For standing water you can't eliminate, BTI briquettes — also called mosquito dunks — kill larvae without harming other wildlife.

When you're outside at dawn or dusk, wear long sleeves and pants and use insect repellent containing DEET, picaridin, or oil of lemon eucalyptus.

If you develop high fever, severe headache, disorientation, or neck stiffness, contact your doctor or health care provider immediately.

The county keeps an interactive mosquito trap map and updates human case counts at dentoncounty.gov/790/West-Nile-Virus. Late summer into fall is the window where this matters most, and that window is open right now.