preložiť After the floods comes the next threat. Experts warn of mosquito invasion
When the water recedes and the weather warms up a bit, experts expect mosquitoes to return in large numbers in flooded areas. So we can also expect mosquitoes to flood after the water floods.
After heavy rains and cold weather, warmer temperatures will return. Ideal conditions for mosquito hatching.
"Water temperature is important there and not so much the air temperature. By standard with those flood species we're talking about 10 degrees Celsius. We are counting on the Morava, maybe even the Danube, pouring out, so we are threatened by a wave of mosquitoes of those flood species, which spread out for several kilometres and breed massively," said Viktória Čabanová from the Biomedical Centre of the Slovak Academy of Sciences.
"Also due to the current weather and the fact that the Morava or the Danube will be dammed up in certain locations into those floodplains, there will be larger areas where there will be potential mosquito breeding grounds," added Peter Bubla, a spokesman for the capital's municipality.
About two weeks
The warmer it is, the faster mosquitoes develop and emerge earlier. A period of about two weeks should now be expected.
Mosquitoes are unavoidable even after interventions
"We are still monitoring potential mosquito breeding sites in Bratislava and where the number of larvae really exceeds a certain amount, we intervene with the biological larvicide BTI," explained Bubla.
With BTI it is not possible to intervene in the whole territory of Bratislava. It is not used in protected water sources and protected areas.
"It has an effectiveness of over 90 percent just for those first larvae," Čabanová added.
The BTI larvicide kills the larvae directly and the adult mosquitoes do not hatch. It's an extract of a bacteria and prevents mosquitoes from developing resistance to it. Mosquitoes are already resistant to chemical sprays.
"Also, because of the interventions that we are doing, the number of mosquitoes will be significantly less than it would have been if there were no such interventions," Bubla concluded.
However, a certain number of mosquitoes has to be taken into account. The municipalities in Záhorie and Austria will deal with them in their own way.