Skip to content

Saturday, Aug. 15, 2020

Is a virus-carrying mosquito able to range farther into northern regions as weather patterns change?

Claire Zimmerman, Gigafact
yes

Aëdes aegypti mosquitoes, known for spreading yellow fever, also transmit dengue, Zika and other viral infections. With warming temperatures their reach has been spreading steadily into more temperate northern regions from South America and Africa.

A recent study measured the rate at which available habitat for A. aegypti has been growing, and found that by 2050, with changing climate conditions, that rate could be two to three times faster. At that pace, its range would spread through North America and China along a frontier moving forward at pace of 2 kilometers to 6 kilometers a year.

This mosquito breed causes an estimated 390 million dengue infections and 51,000 to 380,000 yellow fever infections a year, with case numbers growing annually. Dengue was present in nine countries in the 1970s, but now can be found in 128 countries.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

About fact briefs

Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.

See all fact briefs

Between 2020 and 2022, under close editorial supervision, Gigafact contracted a group of freelance writers and editors to test the concepts for fact briefs and provide inputs to our software development process. We call this effort Gigafact Foundry. Over the course of these two years, Gigafact Foundry writers published over 1500 fact briefs in response to claims they found online. Their important work forms the basis of Gigafact formats and editorial guidelines, and is available to the public on Gigafact.org. Readers should be aware that while there is still a lot of relevant information to be found, not all fact briefs produced by Gigafact Foundry reflect Gigafact's current methods and standards for fact briefs. If you come across any that you feel are out of date and need to be looked at with fresh eyes, don't hesitate to contact us at support@gigafact.org.

Learn More

Latest Fact Briefs

Be a Friend of facts

Help us fund more great fact briefs like this one.