Notes from the team.
Shorter, more personal writing than the Library, process, opinion and field notes.
Aedes aegypti: the watchlist mosquito Europe keeps testing for
The tiger mosquito gets the headlines, but the mosquito public-health teams in Europe truly worry about is its cousin: Aedes aegypti, the yellow fever mosquito, the world's most efficient urban vector of dengue, Zika and chikungunya. It is not established across the European mainland, and keeping it that way is a standing surveillance project involving ports, airports, traps and a lot of quiet reporting. Here is what the watchlist status really means, and why a household's container habits are part of it.
Read →Treated or untreated: how to choose a mosquito net for a European bedroom
Most netting sold for bedrooms is a simple physical barrier, and for most European homes that is exactly what the job needs: a mesh fine enough to stop the bite, hung so there is no gap, cared for so it lasts. Treated netting adds a long-lasting insecticide treatment, authorised under the EU's Biocidal Products Regulation. Here is how to tell which one a household actually needs, and what the labels and regulations behind each really say.
Read →Where mosquitoes go when summer ends: Europe's overwintering playbook
The bites stop before the mosquitoes do. Culex pipiens spends the winter as a mated adult female hidden in cellars, culverts and animal sheds, while the tiger mosquito overwinters as cold-hardy eggs inside every container a household leaves standing. What survives the cold is what seeds next spring, which makes the weeks around the first frost the most useful weeks of the year for a household that wants fewer mosquitoes next season.
Read →The autumn close-out: five steps that end the mosquito season well
The season does not end when the calendar says so, it ends when the household says so. Cases of West Nile virus in Europe are typically reported into the autumn, tiger mosquito eggs are already waiting on the rims of forgotten containers, and the equipment that kept the summer livable is about to be stored for six months. This is the order of work that closes the season without leaving next spring a head start.
Read →How the 2026 European heatwave is fuelling mosquito-borne disease, and how to protect your family
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control has now matched a season of sustained heat to a measurable rise in mosquito-borne illness. As of the first week of August 2026, forty-nine NUTS-3 areas across seven European countries have reported West Nile virus circulation, and the autochthonous dengue, chikungunya and Zika transmission events that Italy, France and Spain have each recorded in recent summers are running ahead of last year's curve. This piece sets out what the data actually says, why heat makes it worse, which households carry the most exposure, and the chemical-free physical-barrier layer a household can put in place this week, from a treated long-lasting insecticidal net over the bed to an untreated mesh gazebo over the terrace.
Read →World Mosquito Day 2026 is two weeks out. Here is where the year actually stands.
Two weeks out from World Mosquito Day on 20 August 2026, the agenda set twelve weeks ago has largely held, and the European summer has filled in the part that was still a forecast in May. France is now running three mosquito-borne viruses locally at once, the ECDC weekly dashboard has West Nile climbing across the Mediterranean, and the year's structural story, funding cuts against a record vaccine rollout, a reorganised climate map, the Wolbachia scale-up and the gene-drive standstill, is intact. This is the mid-August stocktake before the day itself.
Read →Mediterranean mosquito season 2026: what the Rome and Greece West Nile signals mean
Two Mediterranean signals stand out in the summer of 2026: Italy has the widest West Nile spread in Europe and Greece the fastest recent rise. Neither is a new arrival. The tiger mosquito is established across Italy, and West Nile has recurred in Greece almost every year since 2010. This brief reads both as established seasonal presence, sets out the dated surveillance figures, and shows the practical steps households can control.
Read →France's first autochthonous chikungunya of 2026: what one local case in the Tarn means for households
Chikungunya is now transmitting locally in mainland France for the 2026 season, with a first autochthonous case confirmed in the Tarn in Santé publique France's 29 July bulletin. It is a documented, expected event for a day-biting tiger mosquito that has spread across most of the country. The illness is rarely fatal but the joint pain can be genuinely debilitating, and there is no specific treatment. The practical control is the ordinary one: stop the daytime mosquito from reaching people, and remove the small pockets of standing water where it breeds.
Read →West Nile virus is now established in Berlin: what Germany's 2025 numbers mean for the bedroom, and why this is not the tiger mosquito story
West Nile virus is endemic in Berlin. A Charite research team has shown the virus overwinters and circulates locally in the city's Culex mosquitoes, and Germany logged four locally acquired human West Nile cases in 2025. This is a night-biting Culex risk answered by a net over the bed and a screen on the window, and it is a separate problem from the day-biting tiger mosquito headlines out of Bonn, Koln and the wider Rhineland.
Read →France's first autochthonous West Nile cases of 2026: what two local infections actually mean for households
West Nile virus is now transmitting locally in mainland France for the 2026 season, with a first autochthonous case confirmed in the Pyrénées-Orientales in mid-July and a second reported in the Bouches-du-Rhône. Both are documented, expected events for a virus that Culex mosquitoes carry along the Mediterranean each summer. The disease is mostly silent, there is no vaccine and no specific treatment, so the practical control is the same one every household already owns: keep the biting mosquito away from the people in the room.
Read →Why Europe's heatwaves mean mosquito season is now your whole summer
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control has scaled up its warning this week: longer, hotter summers of continuously higher temperature create the conditions for mosquito-borne diseases to spread across Europe. The framing is not the single heatwave in the headlines. It is the season getting longer. That changes what a bedroom and a terrace in mainland Europe need to be, starting this summer and going forward. This piece sets out what the ECDC warning actually says, what it implies for West Nile virus, dengue and chikungunya, and the two complementary, chemical-free layers a household in Europe can put in place now: an untreated physical barrier over the bed at night, and an untreated mesh enclosure over the terrace in the evening.
Read →Zero-chemical mosquito protection for babies and toddlers 0 to 3: the bedroom canopy guide for European parents
From the newborn cot to the toddler bed, the safest mosquito protection for a child aged 0 to 3 in Italy, France or Germany is the same thing every paediatric and public-health body recommends: an untreated fine-mesh net over the sleep space, with no chemistry on the skin or in the air. Repellents become age-permitted at low concentration from two months, but the child's own bedroom stays the place for the zero-chemical barrier. This guide sets out the age ladder, why the untreated bedroom canopy is the default across the whole 0 to 3 band, and the practical setup for the 2026 season.
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