DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — Over the last month, DeKalb Public Health has placed dozens of mosquito traps all over the county, mounted inside what look like tackle boxes.
[DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks]
Stacey Vigil carries a plastic bag full of little white bricks, and she means business.
“You can see there’s a little fan spinning and blowing out right here. But on the bottom of the trap it’s sucking them in through that hole,” Vigil said.
Some of the bloodsuckers they caught have tested positive for West Nile Virus.
Vigil is a DeKalb Health Department wildlife biologist and Mosquito Identifiability Specialist.
On Monday, she tossed the little white bricks into storm drains where the females lay eggs in the standing water. The poison ends the lives of the larvae.
From April through October, her team will have dropped the lethal bricks into 75% of the county’s thousands of storm drains.
She says this effort is vital to help protect the public.
“If we are not able to control mosquito populations, chances of us having major outbreaks of mosquito-borne diseases goes up exponentially,” Vigil said.
Vigil says there hasn’t been a human case of West Nile Virus in DeKalb County in three years. They aim to keep in that way.
[SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]
©2026 Cox Media Group
