“The tiger mosquito has been detected in five municipalities in Brittany. Carrier of certain viruses such as dengue, zika and chikungunya, it is very aggressive and bites ten times a minute during the day. Its sting is painful and can lead to significant allergic reactions, ”warned this Wednesday morning in a tweet.Regional Health Agency (ARS) of Brittany.
A message that immediately sparked comments from Internet users: “Damn tiger mosquitoes! We really needed these critters! “wrote Isabelle. “So a vaccine to come????? asked Mathieu. For information and according to moustique-tigre.info, the bite of the tiger mosquito is “completely benign even if, in some cases, it can cause inflammation or allergic reactions. It can also transmit viruses such as chikungunya, dengue fever or zika, but this mosquito must first have bitten a person carrying the virus”.
“Poorly shopped tweet”
We contacted the ARS to find out the five Breton towns where this mosquito from Asia had been detected. These were the municipalities of Rennes, Domagné (35), Camors (35), Plomelin (29) and Auray (56). “The five municipalities mentioned were in fact in 2021 and not in 2022. The tweet was badly shopped and it was, in fact, confusing”, recognizes the ARS.
“In these five Breton municipalities, continues the Regional Health Agency, these are prevention operations that are carried out by the association Altopictus within a radius of 200 m around the detection sites. But in 2022, no tiger mosquitoes were detected in Brittany”. The ARS removed the tweet in question in order to post “something clearer”.
Despite this confusing tweet, the presence of the tiger mosquito in France is indeed real. Since 2004, it has developed in France, gradually moving northwards, a phenomenon mainly due to global warming. “With everything we see today and everything that is imported to us from everywhere, it is possible that the phenomenon will increase with all these containers which bring us back critters from everywhere and which hang around on the right and on the left”, warns the Morbihan entomologist Michel Collin. “These insects, he specifies, have nothing to do with birds like swallows that come to us in flight. There, insects are imported”.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25795858/Squidgame_Unit_205_N080607.jpg "Squid Game season 2 review: a brutal remix of Netflix’s biggest show")