A Douglas County resident is the latest Kansan confirmed by state health officials to have contracted the West Nile virus.

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment confirmed last week that a 51-year-old county resident had the virus. The department said the resident started showing symptoms of West Nile virus Oct. 7.

The department does not make public the name or gender of those infected.

The county resident brings to 90 the number of Kansans who have contracted either West Nile virus encephalitis or meningitis or acute flaccid paralysis.

This year, the number of confirmed deaths from West Nile in Kansas is five and the number of presumptive deaths is two.

The department also reported that, based on information from commercial labs in the state, there have been 731 people who have tested positive for the West Nile infection. That’s up from 723 reported Oct. 31.

Also this year, there have been 142 birds, 82 horses and 45 mosquito pools that have tested positive.

West Nile Virus is most often transmitted to humans when a mosquito first bites an infected bird, then bites a human.

Symptoms can include headache, low-grade fever and muscle aches. In rare cases, it can also result in serious illness that causes swelling of the brain (encephalitis) or swelling of the covering of the brain (meningitis), paralysis or death.

Officials say 1 in 150 people who have been infected will develop a more serious form of the disease.