Tuesday 30 August 2016


Mosquitoes Can Infect Their Eggs With Dengue
Dr K K Aggarwal


It’s hard to get rid of dengue as the mosquitoes can pass the virus to their offspring in their eggs. Mosquitoes infect their larvae with other viruses, too, including Zika virus.

It makes control harder. Spraying affects adults, but it does not usually kill the immature forms — the eggs and larvae. Spraying will reduce transmission, but it may not eliminate the virus.

Usually, it takes people plus mosquitoes to spread a virus. The mosquitoes bite actively infected people, incubate the virus for a while, and then bite other people to spread it. If no people in an area are infected, no virus spreads.

Sometimes an animal can act as a reservoir — birds can keep West Nile Virus spreading, for instance.

So-called vertical transmission allows the virus to spread even if all the adult mosquitoes in an area die out.

But that's not easy. Aedes are container breeders — they can lay their eggs in small containers and need just a tiny bit of water to hatch.

They live in and around houses and like crowded urban areas where spraying is difficult.

Spraying insecticides to kill adult mosquitoes cannot wipe out Aedes.

They lay their eggs right above the water line in a small container, a discarded tire or some trash.

So when that container is filled and the water covers the eggs, the eggs hatch.

YOU HAVE TO SCRUB THE INSIDE OF THE CONTAINER. THAT IS THE WAY TO GET RID OF THE EGGS.
The eggs can survive being dried out, and they stick really well. They're impervious to insecticides or other chemicals.

So simply emptying containers regularly does not necessarily get rid of the mosquitoes.

You have to scrub the inside of the container. That is the way to get rid of the eggs.

Aedes albopictus, the so-called Asian tiger mosquito that has a much broader ranges than Aedes aegypti, did not transmit Zika to its eggs. 

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