Chickenpox: A highly infectious disease

All parents know. When a child has had chickenpox in the nursery or school, there are all "opportunities" for all his comrades "benefit". Extremely common in children, chickenpox is indeed very ... highly contagious.

Originally chickenpox, a disease most mundane of life, a virus of the family herpes viruses, herpes zoster virus. The same virus herpes zoster can remain dormant for years in the body and determine the occurrence of shingles in adults, generally older, who developed chickenpox in their younger years.

An incubation period of two weeks

   Chickenpox occurs most often in children 2 to 10 years, but it can also be seen in some adults who had previously escaped ^1. It is then readily worst home. The virus is transmitted by skin lesions that cause illness, or through saliva droplets ¹ and an estimated 600 000 to 700 000 people are infected each year in France by one ^4.

The incubation period of chickenpox is between 10 to 21 days, as a rule from 14 to 16 days, and infected children are highly contagious 48 hours before until 5 days after the onset of lesions ^2. But the problem is that many young patients have only very discrete lesions that go unnoticed, as they pass though indeed chickenpox!