Over the past two weeks, the state has tested a total of 68 birds from the Kahului airport. State epidemiologist Dr. Paul Effler said one wild sparrow tested positive in preliminary results that came back Friday. Since then, the state has moved to heightened alert to try to prevent the sometimes deadly mosquito-borne disease from taking hold here.

The state also increased testing of dead birds and will continue until a final determination is made whether the sparrow had West Nile. The determination from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention laboratory in Fort Collins, Colo., is expected late this week or early next week.

To date, the mosquito-borne disease has not been found in Hawai'i, Alaska and Washington.

Maui district environmental health program chief Herbert Matsubayashi said this morning that the Kahului terminal will be sprayed again tonight after the airport closes. Those buildings were sprayed Friday and Saturday night after the test results came back positive.

Matsubayashi said surrounding streets and buildings also will be fogged. He said inspectors will continue to check low-lying areas, drainage systems and other places where they know that water can collect and breed mosquitoes.

Greg Olmsted, vector control branch chief, said that eliminating adult mosquitoes and larvae in a two-mile radius around airports and harbors is key. That's because the most likely way the disease will enter the state is through an infected mosquito catching a ride on a plane or in a cargo container.

Olmsted said he got word late yesterday that the prevention effort is paying off. He said the most recent round of mosquito traps checks showed a 57 percent reduction in the number of adult mosquitoes in September. "We're happy with that," he said.

Mosquitoes pass the virus along to birds and humans.

Olmsted said the state is now making a second round through a two-mile radius at Honolulu International Airport and expects to repeat the process every two to three weeks.

Rebecca Sciulli, head of the state lab's bioterrorism preparedness section, said the lab got the preliminary positive result on the dead bird Friday after testing samples from 40 birds collected on Maui.

Sciulli said the wild house sparrow was the only bird that tested positive for the disease at the Pearl City lab. She said the lab normally tests 20 to 40 bird samples a week but asked for and received 28 additional samples after they got the sparrow results — all of which were negative.

She said the department might take samples from horses, which also are susceptible to the virus.

The former director of the Fort Collins, Colo., CDC lab — Dr. Duane Gubler — now is with the University of Hawai'i, where he serves as director of the new Asia-Pacific Institute of Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease.

Gubler said the initial test done on the suspect sparrow is "highly questionable" because it tends to flag a number of viruses, not just West Nile. "The test that's being conducted in Colorado is a definitive one," he said.

He said stepped-up surveillance is likely to continue no matter what the test results are for at least a couple of months, until colder weather ends the mosquito season on the Mainland.

He said the public can help by eliminating mosquitoes and reporting dead birds. Gubler said six years' experience on the Mainland convinced him that dead bird surveillance was the best way to track the disease.

Gov. Linda Lingle said officials are awaiting test results on the bird before deciding what the best course of action will be for the state.

"It's a major issue," Lingle said. "How much do we spray? Is it one area, one island or the whole state? We're still waiting to find out."

Llelwyn Grant, spokesperson for CDC, said the tests use samples of the bird's kidney, brain or heart.

Grant said the state lab has the capability to do the test but the federal lab provides the initial testing. "When a state has reported its first case of West Nile Virus, the CDC likes to be part of that confirmation process."

As of the latest report Friday, the CDC reported a total of 1,657 human West Nile virus cases with 53 deaths.