{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.02450592885375494, 'fraction_numerical': 0.04901185770750988, 'mean_word_length': 4.943661971830986, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
West Nile virus and transfusion safety in North America: response to an emerging pathogen

West Nile virus (WNV) was first isolated in 1937 from the blood of a 37-year-old febrile woman in the West Nile District of northern Uganda, from where it derives its name [1]. Its geographical range was ultimately found to cover southern Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Russia, and western and South Asia, with sporadic epidemics occurring in several of these regions. There were no known WNV cases in the Western Hemisphere prior to the first localized WNV outbreak in New York City in 1999. Although the virus spread in birds over the next few years, human cases remained minimal and geographically confined. However the situation changed in 2002 when over 4000 WNV illnesses were reported to public health departments; this continued in 2003 with nearly 10 000 cases reported. More significantly, 2942 cases of neuroinvasive disease were reported in 2002 and 2756 were reported in 2003, making this the largest epidemic of WNV neuroinvasive disease ever reported [2]. Although case reports decreased in 2004 and 2005, the still substantial number of cases (1294 neuroinvasive cases in 2005) indicate that the virus has become endemic throughout the continental USA [3].