Toronto Public Health is reporting the city's first human case of West Nile Virus of the year.
Dr. Christine Navarro, Toronto's associate medical officer of health says the city has seen more mosquito pools test positive for West Nile and more mosquitoes in general, likely because of a rainy summer marked by flooding.
48 mosquito pools have tested positive for the virus so far this year, already more than the 38 in all of 2016. 19 people contracted West Nile last year.
"While we expect more cases of West Nile Virus to occur this year, it likely won't be as bad as it was in 2012," Navarro tells NEWSTALK 1010.
Toronto counted 94 human cases of West Nile in 2012, the worst outbreak since the virus first emerged in Canada in the summer of 2002.
While public health says the risk of infection is low there are steps you can take to protect yourself from West Nile. Keep mosquitoes off your skin with long-sleeved shirts or pants and applying an insect repellent with DEET or Icardin as ingredients to any exposed its. You may want to take extra care at dawn and dusk when mosquitoes are most likely to bite.
Symptoms of West Nile usually present themselves two to 15 days after a bite from an infected mosquito. They include body aches, fever, headache, nausea, skin rash, swollen lymph glands and vomiting.