CHEYENNE - In response to local public health officials wanting to better combat the West Nile virus within their counties, the state has agreed to provide more specific locations of where the disease is being found.

Meanwhile, 11 new human cases of the virus were announced Thursday, bringing the statewide total to 209 with dozens of samples coming in every day and more than 100 tested in the past 24 hours, state Department of Health spokesman Ross Doman said.

Before the policy change, also announced Thursday, the state Department of Health required that the Wyoming State Veterinary Laboratory to report the county and the nearest major town where the virus was found in a horse or other animal.

Now, the lab will give local officials a one mile radius within which the infected animal is located.

"We're certainly very pleased with that, we certainly think it was the right thing for them to do," said Chuck Sykes, Sweetwater County environmental health director.

Sweetwater County public health officials first raised concern that they were not getting specific enough information from the state to help them combat the spread of West Nile in their county.

Sykes said the new information from the state will help local health officials monitor and better control the virus, which is transmitted by mosquitoes to animals and humans. Four people have died from West Nile virus in Wyoming.

Donal O'Toole, director of the state vet lab in Laramie, said his agency was still working out the details of the new reporting policy.

"While there is no demonstrable correlation between instances of West Nile virus in horses and a threat to human health, we want to take appropriate action to ensure that the Wyoming public health community has the information it believes is necessary to protect local residents from this virus," O'Toole said.

He said the lab will begin working soon with the Wyoming Geographic Information Science Center to prepare reporting maps for counties.

O'Toole said the new West Nile reports will not pinpoint the exact location of the horse with West Nile.

"According to the Wyoming Department of Health, a one-mile area is sufficiently detailed for use by counties and local communities in planning their spraying operations," O'Toole said. "Any greater detail could have the unfortunate results of stigmatizing horse owner operations with an unwarranted perception of owning an infected herd."

O'Toole said it was important not to give out information that would identify a specific horse owner because it might dissuade future cooperation between horse owners and the state lab.

"One of the most important roles of a state vet lab is to track and quantify the occurrence of veterinary diseases," he said. "If people decide to avoid using the (lab) because their herds' health status will readily become public knowledge, the state of Wyoming will lose an essential diagnostic tool."

The new policy should satisfy both the needs of local health officials and horse owners, he said.

Sykes said Sweetwater County never wanted the state to identify the horse owners.

Sweetwater County has had no human cases of West Nile. It has verified infection of one horse and a few birds, Sykes said.