Blood Screening for West Nile Virus: The Cost-Effectiveness of a Real-Time, Trigger-Based Strategy

Korves, Caroline T.
Goldi, Sue J.
Murray, Megan B.

¹Department of Epidemiology, Boston, Massachusetts
²Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts
³Infectious Disease Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts
⁴The Earth Institute, Columbia University, New York, New York

Reprints or correspondence: Caroline T. Korves, Mailman School of Public Health, ICAP Rm. 1201, 722 W. 168th St., New York, NY 10032 ([email protected]).

Received 3 April 2006; revised 1 April 2006; accepted 22 May 2006

Clinical Infectious Diseases 43(4):p 490-493, August 15, 2006. | DOI: 10.1086/506570

Previous studies have demonstrated that universal blood screening for West Nile virus is not cost-effective. A newly proposed, real-time, trigger-based screening strategy was analyzed and was also shown to be not cost-effective. These results were highly sensitive to pricing of screening assays.