The Centres for Disease Control (CDC) announced Tuesday that Taiwan reported three further dengue fever deaths last week as cases from the outbreak based almost entirely in Taiwan’s Tainan city surged past 10,000.
As Taiwan battles its worst dengue outbreak in almost a decade, 9,463 of the 10,496 local dengue fever cases this year, according to the CDC, were recorded in Tainan.
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According to a press release on Tuesday, the CDC said 1,855 of the 2,017 new dengue fever cases reported in the week of September 19-25 were in Tainan.
The CDC reported that over the past week, three more dengue fever fatalities were recorded across the country, bringing the overall number of the disease’s fatalities this year to 15.
To prevent being stung, the CDC encouraged individuals to dress in light-coloured, long-sleeved clothing and to spray themselves with insect repellent that has been certified by the government.
Additionally, the organisation advised people should also cut back on the number of containers they leave outside or clean and brush them after a rainstorm to get rid of mosquito eggs and larvae.
A joint CDC-central government task force was established in Tainan on September 18 to curb the worsening dengue fever outbreak. The goal was to reduce new weekly cases to below 1,000 within a month, according to Deputy Director General Lo Yi-chun.
The CDC has also identified 165 imported cases so far this year, most of which have originated from Southeast Asian nations. Thailand has the highest number of cases, with 43, followed by Vietnam with 31 and Indonesia with 25, Focus Taiwan reported.
A second hotspot for dengue fever, the CDC warns, is Latin America, where more than 3.47 million cases have been reported in countries like Brazil, Argentina, Peru, and Bolivia.
More than half of the nation’s administrative regions have reported instances, and Taiwan has reported 10,496 local cases thus far this year, the second-highest number in 10 years, barely behind 2015, when over 43,000 cases were documented.
