UK Health Security Agency boss criticised for tropical disease claims
London, 18 December:
A leading expert in mosquito-borne diseases is fiercely critical of Professor Dame Jenny Harries, head of the UK Health Security Agency, calling her recent pronouncements on mosquito-transmitted diseases “entirely fictional” and “shameless”.
Professor Harries was quoted in the media as saying that rising temperatures will make such diseases common in the UK by 2040 because the Asian Tiger Mosquito – which can transmit dengue, chikungunya, zika, yellow fever and other viral diseases – will become established throughout Britain. Dengue will eventually become endemic in London, it is claimed.
But Professor Paul Reiter, retired professor of Insects and Infectious Diseases at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, and a leading specialist in this field, has ridiculed her claims:
“The natural range of the Tiger mosquito, an Asian species, extends from the tropics to regions where mean January temperatures are around minus ten degrees Celsius. Northern strains are able to survive because in late summer, as days grow shorter, the eggs they lay are dormant and remain unhatched until spring arrives”.
https://mailchi.mp/967191964873/uk-health-security-agency-boss-criticised-for-tropical-disease-claims-200084?e=0b1369f9f8
