West Nile virus was first discovered in 1937, in the West Nile area of Uganda, in East Africa. (This is how the virus got its name.) However, before the 1990s, there were very few cases of WNV. Then there was an outbreak in Algeria in 1994 and another in Romania in 1996. By 2004, the virus had spread to North America, the Caribbean islands, and Latin America. It continues to spread through Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, the Middle East, Canada, and the United States. In 2012, one of the worst West Nile virus epidemics yet happened in the United States; 286 people died.