If you’re from Valencia, Catalonia, Murcia or anywhere along the Mediterranean coast, you’ll already be familiar with it. It’s small, black with white stripes, bites during the day, makes hardly any noise, and before you know it, you’ve got the bite mark.
The tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus) is present in Valais. This week, the cantonal authorities carried out the canton’s first preventive spraying campaign. It is not as if it has appeared out of nowhere: the FOPH has been monitoring its spread from southern Europe into the Swiss interior for years. But moving to preventative spraying marks a change.
To anyone who has spent years in Switzerland without ever having lived in southern Europe, this may seem like an exaggeration. It isn’t. The tiger mosquito is not simply ‘just another mosquito’: it bites several times in a single session (the common mosquito bites once and flies off), is active from dawn until dusk, and can transmit dengue and chikungunya if the epidemic vector is present. The risk of transmission in Switzerland is currently very low. But it is increasing as the climate changes.
Practical tips: wear long clothing in areas with dense vegetation; fit mosquito nets to windows; and remove any standing water from your balcony or garden (plant pots, buckets, saucers). Repellents containing DEET or picaridin are effective. And if you come across one, the FOPH has a reporting form on its website.