While the health authorities of the various Latin American countries were issuing the first alerts concerning the coronavirus, with around forty cases detected throughout the subcontinent, it is facing another type of epidemic, much more alarming: that of the dengue. According to the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), As of Friday March 6, since the beginning of the year, 569,400 people have been affected and 118 have died from this infectious disease transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes.
The current dengue epidemic, which began in 2019, is the worst in the history of the subcontinent: in 2019, PAHO had recorded 3.1 million cases and 1,534 deaths. "This is the largest figure in the history of dengue fever in America, 30% higher than the number of cases reported in 2015", year when the number of cases had been the highest, underlines the UN organization.
As of Friday, March 6, the coronavirus, it affected seven countries in Latin America: Ecuador is the most affected country with 13 proven cases, followed by Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, the Dominican Republic and Peru. There were no deaths.
"Intense transmission"
"Even with lower lethality, the trend in the number of cases (dengue) in 2020 seems to be the same as the previous year, said Sebastian Oliel of PAHO. It will certainly be an epidemic year with intense transmission. The four serotypes (that counts the disease) continue to circulate throughout the region, particularly in urban areas. "
Paraguay, where no case of coronavirus has yet been detected, is the country with the highest incidence of dengue fever: 137,000 cases have been reported since the beginning of 2020 – including 11,300 confirmed for the moment -, and 34 people died. The country's own president, Mario Abdo Benitez, fell ill in late January, followed by his wife, Silvana Lopez Moreira, two weeks later. For Hernan Rodriguez, director of the directorate for communicable diseases in Paraguay:
"These numbers represent only the tip of the iceberg, they do not include people who see but have not been reported for whatever reason, people who are sick but do not see, or people who are infected by the virus but who do not develop the disease. These figures should be multiplied by five or ten. "
Fifty million people infected each year
Everywhere, the increase is considerable compared to other years. Mexico announced an increase of 104% for the first two months of 2020 (1,455 cases) compared to the same period of 2019 (711 cases). In Peru, where the health alert was issued in the Amazon, fifteen people have already died. In Argentina, the disease has reached 14 of the country's 22 provinces, including that of Buenos Aires, the most populous. Nearly 800 people fell ill and three died, including one in the suburbs of the capital.
As a proportion of the population, the area most affected by dengue fever, after Paraguay, is … Guadeloupe, with more than 5,000 cases since the epidemic began in mid-October 2019. A 17-year-old girl in died in Martinique on February 11.
According to the World Health Organization, dengue fever, which occurs in tropical and subtropical regions, with a predilection for urban and semi-urban areas, affects 50 million people worldwide each year. Among them, 500,000 are affected by dengue hemorrhagic fever, which is fatal in more than 2.5% of cases. According to the Pasteur Institute, two and a half billion people live in risk areas. To date there is no vaccine or treatment.
