Three new deaths “linked to Chikungunya” were recorded in Reunion, French Island of the Indian Ocean, bearing the number of deaths since the start of the epidemic, Hebdodary Bulletin announced on Wednesday.
“Since the beginning of the year, nine deaths that occurred between weeks 11 and 14 (from March 10 to April 6, editor’s note) in people over the age of 70 carrying comorbidities have been classified as linked to chikungunya,” said the health agency, adding that “nine other deaths”, including a neonatal, are being investigated to determine if they are linked to the virus.
The epidemic is “stabilized at a high level of transmission”, adds Public Health France, according to which more than 39,000 confirmed cases in Chikungunya have been reported in Reunion since the start of the year.
From April 7 to 13, the last week for which the data is known, 350 emergencies were recorded against 289 the previous week, an increase of 21%.
Vaccination campaign
The number of confirmed cases recorded over the same period is down, from 6237 to 4304, but Public Health France specifies that this number is not consolidated and that it could therefore prove to be higher.
In total, “47 serious cases of chikungunya were reported mainly in the elderly or infants requiring intensive care management,” said the health agency. These were 27 adults over the age of 65, three people with comorbidities and 17 infants under three months of age.
There is no specific treatment against the disease, but a vaccination campaign was launched in early April. Some 40,000 doses of the IXCHIQ vaccine, the first having obtained a marketing authorization in Europe, arrived in Reunion and 60,000 additional doses were purchased.
But the campaign “timidly starts”, with around 3000 people already vaccinated, said on Tuesday the director general of the Regional Health Agency (ARS), Gérard COOLLON, to French President Emmanuel Macron traveling on the island.
According to the Minister of Health Yannick Neuder, also on site, “around 120,000” people may have been contaminated by chikungunya, a disease transmitted by the Tiger mosquito.
Before the current outbreak, no case of Chikungunya had been reported since 2010 in Reunion since 2010. A large epidemic had touched 260,000 people there and left more than 200 dead between 2005 and 2006.
