Are mosquitoes vectors of Covid-19? Scientists respond

Reacting to speculation about a possible role for mosquitoes in the spread of Covid-19, American researchers have established that the insect cannot be involved in transmitting the virus from one patient to another. The infectious agent is also not able to develop in the body of a mosquito.

Although mosquitoes can transmit dangerous diseases like malaria and dengue fever, don’t be wary of Covid-19, say researchers at Kansas State University.

In their study published by the Nature site, they claim to have provided “the first experimental data to study the capacity of SARS-CoV-2 to infect and be transmitted by mosquitoes”.

Scientists have studied three prevalent mosquito species: Aedes aegypti, Aedes albopictus, and Culex quinquefasciatus. According to them, their study confirms that the disease, as previously reported by the WHO, cannot be transmitted by insects.

“We demonstrate that even under extreme conditions, the SARS-CoV-2 virus is unable to develop in these mosquitoes and therefore cannot be transmitted to humans, even in the unlikely event that a mosquito feeds on a host,” explains the study.

At the end of May, Anna-Bella Failloux, head of the Arbovirus and insect vectors laboratory at the Pasteur Institute, assured Republican Berry that patients with Covid-19 did not develop a sufficient quantity of virus in the blood to infect a mosquito. She nevertheless stressed that all the hypotheses remained open at this stage of the study.

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