2024-10-16 14:09:00
The number of indigenous dengue cases in France is skyrocketing. Since May 1, when the tiger mosquito‘s activity began, 78 people have contracted the tropical disease, without having traveled to a country where the disease is endemic. according to a French public health bulletin published on Wednesday 16 October. They had simply been contaminated by the bite of a local mosquito, which had previously chosen to take its blood meal on a person bringing the disease back from a trip to the French West Indies or abroad. The disease can cause high fever, often accompanied by headache, nausea and vomiting, for two to three weeks. It is fatal only in rare cases. But a second infection increases the risk of severe dengue.
If it is not yet an epidemic, it is a record, since until then the highest number of indigenous cases (66) had been observed in 2023 during the entire mosquito season, from May 1st to November 30th. “This year it is still possible to reach a hundred cases”estimates Frédéric Simard, director of research at the Institute for Research for Development (IRD) in Montpellier. “Large outbreaks of contamination can still occur at the end of the season, even if we are in the decline phase of contamination”warns the entomologist.
But are we that far away from the dengue epidemic in mainland France? This was stated in a report by the National Agency for Health Security, Food, Environment and Work (ANSES) published in Septemberthe probability of an epidemic occurring in metropolitan France in the next five years is estimated at between 6 and 7 on a scale of 0 to 9. More than dengue fever, this estimate concerns all arboviruses, i.e. diseases caused by a virus transmitted by arthropods, here the tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus of its scientific name. Experts are therefore assessing both an epidemic of Zika and chikungunya, of which an indigenous case was first identified in mainland France in mid-July.
Localized outbreaks
The question of scale remains. Currently the situation is still limited to localized outbreaks, i.e “several episodes of indigenous transmission, simultaneous or not, and without epidemiological link”according to the ANSES typology. Since May 1, ten outbreaks have been registered with one to twenty-five sufferers, mainly in Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, but also three in Occitanie and one in Montélimar (Drôme), in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. The most serious outbreak was identified in La Crau (Var), with twenty-five people falling ill in the department in a month, in the middle of summer.
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