Asian tiger mosquitoes spotted in Paris

[August 20, 2015]  PARIS (Reuters) - Asian tiger mosquitoes, known to carry deadly diseases including dengue fever and chikungunya, were spotted in Paris for the second year running this summer, a local French health agency said.

The striped insects were detected by a visitor to the Parc Floral botanical garden in the east of the French capital. Tests by the health agency and city authorities confirmed they were Asian tiger mosquitoes.

The park was closed on Wednesday night for an anti-mosquito operation, the city of Paris said in a statement. Authorities said the presence of the mosquitoes in the park was recent and confined to ponds away from homes, and that no other green space in the city had been affected.

The Asian tiger mosquito, which can bite dozens of times a minute and originates from Asia, was spotted for the first time in the Paris region last year, 10 years after the first specimen was signaled in France, in the southeast of the country.

Diseases transmitted by insects such as mosquitoes are on the rise and have spread across new parts of Europe, including Greece, Italy and France, over the past decade.

However no indigenous case of dengue fever and chikungunya has been signaled in the Paris region to date, the health agency said.

(Reporting by Michel Rose; Editing by Andrew Callus and Dominic Evans)

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