Dengue fever alert in France, within the wake of the tiger mosquito

The acrid odor falls slowly, but it surely takes within the throat. Fortuitously, at this hour, it doesn’t hassle many individuals. It’s 5:45 am, Tuesday September 20, and the pick-up of the Interdepartmental Settlement for Mosquito Management (EID) begins its sluggish circuit within the streets of La Gaude (Alpes-Maritimes). Flashing lights, the roar of the compressor: the procession shakes up the tranquility of a abandoned late night time on this village within the hinterland of Good. The hunt for tiger mosquitoes is on. First, the principle roads, then the secondary roads. The nebulized liquid spurts out in thick waves and attracts swirls within the mild of the streetlamps. The wind, mild this morning, strikes them in direction of the hedges, the gardens and the inexperienced areas which line the tracks. Deltamethrin droplets decide on any floor they encounter. It’s this pesticide from the pyrethroid household that clears the throat.

“It is an insecticide, not faucet water…”, acknowledges Grégory L’Ambert, EID supervisor of the preventive struggle in opposition to Aedes albopictus, the scientific title of the tiger mosquito. “However by treating between 4 a.m. and eight a.m., with a product that degrades quickly below the impact of warmth and the solar, we keep away from bothering the inhabitants an excessive amount of, but additionally affecting different species, and particularly pollinators », assures this 40-year-old medical entomologist. Often based mostly in Montpellier, he has been crusing on this sector of the Alpes-Maritimes because the starting of September. On the coronary heart of a triangle of some sq. kilometres, shaped by the bordering municipalities of Saint-Jeannet, Gattières and La Gaude, is at present creating the most important outbreak of autochthonous dengue fever ever seen in metropolitan France. Thirty-one instances formally recorded by the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur (PACA) regional well being company (ARS) as of September 21. Almost a dozen within the means of being confirmed. “It’s unprecedented… In the long run, we threat reaching fifty instances”, worries Grégory L’Ambert, watching the solar rise over La Gaude.

Unpublished. In a press launch printed on Wednesday September 21, the desk drawn up by the French public well being company (SPF) doesn’t say anything. The 31 instances formally listed within the focus of the Alpes-Maritimes explode the counters nicely. Thus far, the utmost had been reached in Nîmes, in 2015, with eight folks contaminated. Broadening the main focus results in the identical remark: throughout France, forty-seven instances of autochthonous dengue fever have already been recorded this summer season, unfold over 5 outbreaks, the place the height peaked at fourteen instances in 2020. “Past the variety of instances, this 12 months 2022 is characterised by the extension of the danger on the metropolitan territory with the prevalence of outbreaks in departments hitherto spared: Pyrénées-Orientales, Hautes-Pyrénées and Haute- Garonneinsists SPF. Beforehand, the instances had primarily occurred within the Var, the Alpes-Maritimes, the Hérault, the Gard. »

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