Dengue rates are rising globally, with reported cases since 2000 up eight-fold to 4.2 million in 2022, a WHO official said on July 21.
In January, the WHO claimed that dengue is the world’s fastest-spreading tropical disease and alleged it could be a “pandemic threat.”
The disease was found in Sudan’s capital Khartoum for the first time on record, according to a health ministry report in March, while Europe has reported a surge in cases and Peru declared a state of emergency in most regions.
About half of the world’s population is now at risk, Raman Velayudhan, a specialist at the WHO’s control of neglected tropical diseases department, told journalists in Geneva on Friday.
Cases reported to the WHO hit an all-time high in 2019 with 5.2 million cases in 129 countries, said Mr. Velayudhan via video link.
This year the world is on track for “4 million plus” cases, depending mostly on the Asian monsoon season. Already, close to 3 million cases have been reported in the Americas, he said, adding there was concern about the southern spread to Bolivia, Paraguay, and Peru.
Argentina, which has faced one of its worst outbreaks of dengue in recent years, is sterilizing mosquitoes using radiation that alters their DNA before releasing them into the wild.
“The American region certainly shows it is bad and we hope the Asian region may be able to control it,” Mr. Velayudhan said.
Officials in the European Union said that as of June 8, 2023, some 2.1 million cases have been reported around the world, with 974 deaths.
“Dengue is occurring in urban areas where it did not exist before,” Coralith Garcia, associate professor at the school of medicine at Cayetano Heredia University in Peru, told Fox News this week. The virus is on the rise in Peru because “it’s so crowded that anything can happen,” she added.
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