The health monitoring office of French Polynesia is worried and expects new victims because the peak of the chikungunya epidemic has not yet been reached. The latest report already shows 11,000 cases of infected people and 4 deaths since October.
Three of the deceased patients are elderly people, who already suffered from other pathologies. The fourth is an eight-day-old infant: chikungunya had been transmitted to him by his mother at birth.
The government asked the population to destroy the lodgings in tiger mosquitoes who transmit the virus. An insecticide is sprayed in the most affected neighborhoods. 95% of cases are recorded in Tahiti and Moorea, the islands which concentrate the majority of the population, but all the archipelagos are affected.
Chikungunya is manifested by several symptoms in the infected person, including joint damage, headache, accompanied by fever, muscle aches, skin rash, inflammation of one or more cervical lymph nodes.
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