Isolation and Characterization of West Nile Virus from the Blood of Viremic Patients During the 2000 Outbreak in Israel

Abstract

We report the isolation of West Nile (WN) virus from four patient serum samples submitted for diagnosis during an outbreak of WN fever in Israel in 2000. Sequencing and phylogenetic analysis revealed two lineages, one closely related to a 1999 New York isolate and the other to a 1999 Russian isolate.

Keywords

• West Nile virus
• outbreak
• human isolates
• nucleotide sequence
• phylogenetic analysis
• United States