Four Toulouse residents were bitten abroad by mosquitoes and caught dengue fever. But the Regional Health Agency especially fears the proliferation of the tiger mosquito in Haute-Garonne, after the recent storms and heavy rains.
Toulouse, Lherm, Rouffiac-Tolosan and the latest case, Lauzerville, in the south-east of Toulouse, where a mosquito control operation was carried out overnight from Wednesday to Thursday, around a private residence. In a few days, four sick Toulouse residents were diagnosed with the famous dengue virus, whose symptoms resemble a big flu. All were bitten by mosquitoes while on a recent vacation in Asia.
“We have an average of around forty cases per year in Haute-Garonne, often in August September. These are mainly imported cases, returning from vacation in the tropics, Asia, Africa, West Indies, where the virus is constantly circulating. When a blood test reveals one, we warn the patient, we ask him about the places or the people he has frequented since his return. We have two or three days to treat the sites where he could have been bitten by a new mosquito. Fortunately, people are a bit knocked out and often stay at home. Mosquitoes are removed to cut the chain of transmission. We pay attention to ponds, rivers, we warn neighbors, beekeepers, organic farmers. We must intervene quickly and strongly, ”says Jean-Sébastien Dehecq, sanitary engineer from the ARS (Regional Health Agency) Occitanie.
Despite all these precautions, several indigenous cases were discovered at the end of last summer, in Toulouse and La Salvetat Saint-Gilles. The patients had nevertheless remained in France. “The virus is not transmitted by humans. A patient is not contagious. Only a mosquito that bites a patient could infect other people,” reassures the ARS.
“A peak in 15 days”
In Haute-Garonne, specialists are concerned, however, about the probable invasion of the tiger mosquito, the most formidable of the 80 species recorded. “He is everywhere in Haute-Garonne! The females lay their eggs in still water, and the recent heavy rains have filled the toys, watering cans, tubs and water collectors, cups, manholes, gutters, pools with socks… With the return of the sun, we are going to enter the hard one in 15 days! We’re going to experience quite a peak. Last summer’s drought did not wear him out…”, announces Jean-Sébastien Dehecq.
If everyone tends to criticize the absence of mosquito control or the number of traps, always considered insufficient, in short, to criticize the public authorities and in particular the town halls, the entomologist advises above all to hunt for small water reservoirs. We must therefore be wary of sleeping water: “A mosquito lives for about a month. It moves very little, within a radius of 30 to 50 meters from its birthplace. And a female needs blood, sting several times a day to make her eggs. In a garden, it can sting several people around the same table. Our cities protect them. At home, everyone can act easily to limit proliferation.
Otherwise, this creature that no one supports could well spoil our beautiful summer evenings…