Chikungunya in Reunion: still “a high level of transmission”, but some signs of decline

By The New Obs with AFP

Published on April 30, 2025 at 9:10 p.m.

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The chikungunya epidemic in Réunion remains at "a high level of transmission" despite a slight decline in certain indicators, the public health agency indicated on Wednesday, April 30, while the authorities' management of the crisis has fueled a war of words in the Assembly.

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In general medicine, chikungunya-related activity remains at "a very high level" , with more than 23,300 consultations from April 21 to 27 and more than 160,000 since the beginning of 2025, according to the latest report from Santé publique France (SpF). In hospitals, the dynamics of the epidemic vary from one area to another with "a decrease in emergency room visits in the South (but still at a high level), in the West and East, and a trend towards stabilization in the North" , she specified.

Nine chikungunya-related deaths among people over 70 years old with comorbidities have been recorded by the health agency. Twenty other deaths, including that of an infant, are under investigation, according to the new report. And, to date, 57 serious cases have been reported, mainly among people over 65 with comorbidities and infants under three months old.

A first vaccine

Since the beginning of the year, 2,139 emergency room visits due to chikungunya have been recorded in the island's four hospitals, including 332 during the week of April 21 to 27, compared to 389 the previous week, a decline in both adults and infants.

The number of confirmed cases also decreased, from 5,542 to 3,245 in one week, but this provisional number could increase, SpF specifies. Nearly 120,000 people have been infected by the virus, transmitted by the tiger mosquito , since the beginning of the year in Reunion, according to ARS estimates.

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Faced with this widespread and major epidemic, a vaccination campaign was launched at the beginning of April, with the first vaccine against chikungunya to have obtained marketing authorization in Europe and the green light from the health authorities in France, Ixchiq (Valneva).

Those over 65 were excluded "without delay" on Saturday , after three "serious adverse events" , including one death, in people over 80 who had recently been vaccinated. Some 3,000 people have been vaccinated against chikungunya in Réunion, according to figures announced on April 22 to President Emmanuel Macron during his visit to the island.

The crisis has taken a political turn since the suspension of vaccinations for seniors. "Minister, this crisis has been poorly managed, this epidemic has been underestimated, the people of Réunion have been abandoned," Réunion MP Karine Lebon (GDR) told Health Minister Yannick Neuder on Wednesday in the National Assembly. "How can we still believe the authorities when the ARS (Regional Health Agency) had sworn that the vaccine was safe?" she asked.

Shortly after, Jean-Hugues Ratenon (LFI) accused: "You know (that the vaccine) had not proven its effectiveness in real life: after the monkeys, here are the people of Réunion as guinea pigs," he said.

"I cannot allow you to say that the people of Réunion are being used as guinea pigs," replied the minister, recalling the scientific green lights and the monitoring of adverse effects but pinning "obscurantism ." Faced with the "dismay of the people of Réunion," "we have an obligation of means" against chikungunya, he assured.