2023-08-04 16:35:58
These are the first autochthonous cases of the summer season. Two people residing together in Gardanne, near Marseille, in the Bouches-du-Rhône, were identified as carriers of the dengue virus when they had not traveled to a contaminated area before the appearance of their symptoms. This means that they caught the disease on French territory, via a tiger mosquito – Aedes albopictus from his real name. A first signal taken seriously by the Regional Health Agency (ARS) of Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, while the number of tiger mosquitoes has only increased on the metropolitan territory since its arrival in 2004 in Menton .
“To prevent the spread of the disease, mosquito control was carried out [vendredi matin] within a radius of 200 meters in the district where the cases reside (public road, private gardens)”, specifies the ARS in a press release on Friday August 4. This is standard procedure in cases of autochthonous transmission, supplemented by a door-to-door survey in the affected neighborhood to identify any other people with symptoms suggestive of the disease. “A second pass will be carried out next week to be sure that all risk is eliminated”says Grégory L’Ambert, head of the preventive fight againstAedes albopictus to the Interdepartmental Agreement for Mosquito Control of the Mediterranean Coast (EID-Med), a historical player in the fight against mosquitoes in the Mediterranean region.
Mosquito control consists of spraying deltamethrin, a pesticide from the pyrethroid family, around native cases or those imported by infected travelers. Why within a radius of 200 meters? The tiger mosquito is known to move in a limited way around its hatching point, a distance estimated at around 150 meters by entomologists.
Massive trapping
The Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region, which has the largest number of towns colonized by Aedes albopictus, is subject to special monitoring. In 2022, fifty-two indigenous cases were documented there out of the sixty-six identified in France, during an epidemic deemed “exceptional” by Public Health France. Since the start of the 2023 season, only twenty-nine imported cases have so far been reported there and twenty treatments carried out. “But the biggest is ahead of us and things are accelerating with the return from vacation”specifies Mr. L’Ambert.
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