From the article:
“A piece of data that we have that is a bit alarming is the amount of accumulated dengue […], this is closely related to climate change,” said the Guatemalan Minister of Health, Óscar Cordón, this week.
In Panama, according to official information, seven people have died, and more than 3,200 cases have been recorded, of which 16 are severe. In all of 2023, there were 18 deaths and more than 16,500 infected in this country.
“It is important to keep environments clean and thus avoid the increase of mosquito breeding sites,” warned the Ministry of Health of Panama. In Honduras, there have been four deaths, and 8,000 cases have been registered, according to official data.
“There has been an increase from one week to another from an average of 100 cases [to an average] of 800 to 900 and more,” warned the spokesperson for the Honduran Ministry of Health, Miguel Osorio.
In Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Costa Rica, there are officially no dengue deaths this year. Managua reports 1,545 cases, but there are another 17,300 under investigation. In El Salvador, there were more than 1,100 people affected by dengue. Last year there were 6,000. Costa Rica reports 6,000 cases.
It is “a cause for concern since it represents three times more cases than those reported for this same date in 2023, a record year with more than 4.5 million cases reported in the region,” said PAHO director Jarbas Barbosa last week.