Oliver Conway

So it's Aedes aegypti, which is more of a tropical species, and Aedes albopictus.

Aedes albopictus, which is the Asian tiger mosquito, started invading into Europe, or at least discovered in Europe in 1979 in Albania.

And it's been slowly making its way across Europe, moving with people and also because of climate change.

But this mosquito has now really taken a foothold in places like France and Italy.

And so as it's a transmitting vector of viruses, we can now see a change in the risk to people across Europe.

And so chikungunya historically has not been in parts of Europe.

It first came up in 2010.

In France, for example, there have only been a handful of cases.

However, last year, this rapidly changed.

Yes, absolutely.

So what we've done is looked at the key components of how this virus can replicate within the mosquito itself.

And that's incredibly temperature sensitive.

And so what our research shows is that the thermal limit to this transmission is much, much lower than we previously thought.

So that as a consequence, parts of northern Europe are more at risk.

And also in southern Europe, the window at which there is risk will be much, much longer.

So into now spring and also late autumn.

The first and foremost line of protection is covering up.

As you said, it's a daytime biter.

Using insecticides on yourselves is really, really important.

But yes, there are vaccines available.