{"id":299031,"date":"2026-02-15T07:49:20","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T07:49:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/299031\/"},"modified":"2026-02-15T07:49:20","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T07:49:20","slug":"scientists-seek-rare-victims-of-irish-mosquito-bites-after-west-nile-virus-detected-for-first-time-in-britain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/299031\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists seek rare victims of Irish mosquito bites after West Nile virus detected for first time in Britain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">Irish mosquitoes are typically found in wetlands, floodplains, coastal saltmarshes\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Drogheda, Wicklow and Derry are all mosquito hotspots. Photo: Getty\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/GettyImages_2180939667.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Drogheda, Wicklow and Derry are all mosquito hotspots. Photo: Getty<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Ireland has as many as 21 species of mosquito present nationwide, but scientists say it\u2019s rare for them to bite humans here.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">A new scientific review has shown that while most Irish mosquitoes feed on birds and animals, there are \u00adspecific places where they feed on \u00adhumans. Drogheda has been \u00adidentified as one such hotspot, as well as parts of Wicklow and Derry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Irish mosquitoes are typically found in wetlands, floodplains, coastal saltmarshes Drogheda, Wicklow and Derry are all mosquito hotspots.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299032,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[3414,103,2120,61,60,5762],"class_list":["post-299031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-department-of-health","tag-health","tag-hse","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-ucd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299031\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}