25 people have died from dengue in Ho Chi Minh City this year, the highest number in 10 years.
“The outbreak of dengue shows no sign of remission and could get worse,” the city’s health director, Thang Chi Tuong, said on Monday. “The number of critically ill cases this year is several times higher than last year, so there is a possibility that the situation in the last quarter of this year will be ‘serious’,” he said.
There were about 60,000 cases this year, many times the number the city experienced last year.
Tuong said there were more than 100 dengue hotspots per week in recent months.
Dr. Luong Chan Quang of the Pasteur Institute said Ho Chi Minh City accounted for 80 percent of the country’s total cases this year, and the outbreak is likely to continue due to the warm, humid weather where mosquitoes thrive.
Vietnam has been trying to find an effective way to treat dengue. Dengue fever is one of the leading causes of 28 common infectious diseases.
The only vaccine available worldwide is not recommended for people who do not have dengue.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said in January that the number of cases of dengue fever has risen rapidly worldwide in recent decades, with the majority of cases asymptomatic or mild and self-managing, resulting in an underreported number of dengue cases.
The number of dengue cases reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) increased from 505,430 in 2000 to 5.2 million in 2019.
The death toll has risen from 960 to 4,032, and young people are said to be mostly victims.