Brazil has surpassed the alarming threshold of 1.5 million dengue cases, for a total of 450 confirmed deaths, while investigations are underway on over 800 deaths.
The figures released by the Ministry of Health only represent infections since the beginning of the year.
In all of 2023, there were 1,658,816 dengue patients in the South American country.
In practice, in the first months of 2024 almost 20 thousand infections were recorded in the country per day, and projections from the ministry in recent weeks had highlighted that infections could reach 5 million.
Even the congenital infection syndrome for the Zika virus, according to official data, raised its head again in 2023, with 1,035 cases, the highest figure since 2019. On the other hand, from a clinical point of view, it is extremely difficult to distinguish the symptoms of dengue from those of chikungunya.
For this reason, the World Health Organization recommends treating both suspected cases of dengue and chikungunya, as dengue is considered more lethal.
There are already several Brazilian states that have decreed a state of emergency, including Rio Grande do Sul, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and the federal district of Brasilia, while campaigns continue to try to avoid the proliferation of the Aedes Egypti mosquito, a transmission vehicle of the virus.
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