Roads were closed and people asked to stay in their homes in southeast Paris during the early hours of Thursday as pest control contractors sprayed insecticide in trees, green spaces and other mosquito-breeding areas.
The regional health body for the capital, ARS Ile-de-France, said the area targeted for fumigation was 150 metres around the home of a person in the 13th district of the capital who had contracted dengue fever while travelling. City authorities are trying to prevent a chain of transmission developing in the Paris region, which is home to an estimated 12 million people.
After first being spotted in France in 2004, it is now present in 71 of its 96 departments on the mainland, even in areas close to the northern Channel coast, according to health ministry data."We are convinced that it is a risk that is going to get bigger," Marie-Claire Paty, head of a vector-borne disease monitoring unit at the public health body Sante Publique, told AFP in April.