M.O.H. Monitoring Dengue Epidemic as Rainy Season in Full Swing

Marvin Manzanero

The dengue epidemic has fortunately been on a downward trend over the past few weeks. Last week, the lowest number of new clinically-confirmed cases since the start of the year, were recorded. But it doesn’t mean we can let our guard down.  Director of Health Services Doctor Marvin Manzanero told News Five that there is concern that with the rainy season in full swing, there may be flare-ups. The ministry is maintaining its vector control routine and asking residents to do what they can to eliminate mosquito breathing sites around their properties. 

Dr. Marvin Manzanero, Director of Health Services

“Last week’s figure is the lowest for the last eight weeks; so the numbers continue to go down. It peaked three to four weeks ago in terms of total numbers, but with the rainy season now fully upon us, we are going to remain vigilant in terms of any potential increase in the number of cases. Approval has been gotten from finance to extend the spraying cycles. I know that we are getting constant questions from almost all communities saying not enough spraying is being done. But we acknowledge that because we have expanded the urbanization of the country, rural communities have grown so it is a difficult task to ensure that you are able to get every single community onboard in that regard. So that is going to be a difficult situation to ensure that you do spraying across all communities. That’s one and two, once the rainy season has started, you know that spraying cycles follow patterns. You can’t be doing spraying if you have active raining happening. So our effort is a community one. We continue to ask the community to be fully engaged in terms of working with us to keep cleaner environments.”