As the summer months approach and mosquito season returns, the Grapevine City Council OK'd renewing an annual contract for mosquito ground spraying services at its meeting June 3.

In an agreement with Tarrant County, Vector Disease Control International, LLC first began providing ground spraying treatments for Grapevine in 2013. With the approval, VDCI will continue provide the service that is one element to the company's response plan to the West Nile virus.

Along with the ground spraying, Dewey Stoffels, environmental manager for the Grapevine Public Works Department, said the plan incorporates trap sampling, continuing with inter-departmental task force efforts to combat the virus and continuing implementation of the 2013 Mosquito Borne Virus Response Plan.

Stoffels reported that while there were 10 positive mosquito pool samples collected in Grapevine last year, no human cases were confirmed in the city. He said there were two deaths in Tarrant County.

This year, Stoffels said that according to Tarrant County professional health officials, there could be an elevation in West Nile cases from past years due to a change in reporting. A patient is no longer required to have a fever before being counted as having West Nile disease, the more severe form of the virus.

Throughout weekly trap sampling, Stoffels said there will be six trap sites set throughout the city. Five of them will remain in a static location and the sixth is a mobile trap that can be moved from place to place.

Before any sprays begin, Stoffels said VDCI will inform the public in the affected areas about dates, times and location of spraying. Then each street in that area will be treated within a half-mile radius of the mosquito trap positive pool sample. Staff will set or re-set traps in the treated area to monitor for infected mosquito pool sample. If samples still come back positive, Stoffels said the same half-mile radius is treated throughout three consecutive nights.

Aerial spraying is a possibility in extreme cases.

"In the event we did have an outbreak situation we would follow Tarrant County's lead on aerial spraying if that became a situation we had to look at," Stoffels said.