2024-10-16 14:09:00
The number of indigenous cases of dengue fever in France is skyrocketing. Since May 1, when tiger mosquito activity began, 78 people have contracted the tropical disease, without having traveled to a country where the disease is endemic, according to a Public Health France bulletin published Wednesday October 16. They were simply 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 illness can cause high fever, often accompanied by headache, nausea and vomiting, for two to three weeks. It is only fatal 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 the greatest number of indigenous cases (66) had until then been observed in 2023 over the entire mosquito season, from May 1 to November 30. “It is still possible to reach around a hundred cases this year”estimates Frédéric Simard, research director at the Research Institute for Development (IRD) in Montpellier. “Large outbreaks of contamination can still occur at the end of the season, even if we are in the declining phase of contamination”warns the medical entomologist.
But are we so far from the dengue epidemic in mainland France? According to a report from the National Agency for Health Safety, Food, Environment and Work (ANSES) published in Septemberthe probability that an epidemic will occur in mainland France in the next five years is estimated between 6 and 7 on a scale of 0 to 9. More than dengue fever, this estimate concerns all arboviruses, that is to say diseases caused by a virus transmitted by arthropods, here the tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus of its scientific name. Experts are therefore considering both an epidemic of Zika and chikungunya, an indigenous case of which was identified for the first time in mainland France in mid-July.
Localized outbreaks
There remains the question of scale. 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 ranging from one to twenty-five sick people have been recorded, mainly in Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur, but also three in Occitanie and one in Montélimar (Drôme), in Auvergne-Rhône -Alps. The largest outbreak was identified in La Crau (Var), with twenty-five people falling ill in the department in one month in the heart of summer.
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