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There’s an outbreak of Dengue in Belize and the rest of Central America. The numbers are the highest in Corozal and Orange Walk, and trending up in Cayo and Stann Creek.  

So how many more cases are there this year?  Try 20 times more than last year at this time!

The Ministry of Health’s Surveillance Officer, Lorna Perez told us more:…

Lorna Perez - Ministry of Health, Surveillance Officer
"It started in the north, Orange Walk to be specific then we started to see the shift going up Corozal which has maintained up to now, Corozal is actually showing some high numbers but since the last 6 weeks, even though Dangriga, some communities had some elevated numbers at the beginning of the year for this last 6 weeks I must we have seen an increase in Dangriga Town itself. So presently we have like Corozal having 124 cases, Orange Walk 230, Cayo having 98, Stann Creek 105. So Belize and Toledo district are reporting the least numbers at the moment with less than 20 cases each but the increasing numbers that we're seeing within the last weeks is in Dangriga and Cayo district. In the country, we definitely are seeing there was a gradual increase in the beginning of the year which was still higher than normal but looking at the last 6 weeks, now we're seeing quite an increase. It has presently at this point we have 20 times more than what we had last year at the same time. 20 times more confirmed cases and this is just talking about laboratory confirmed cases and so if we look at last year when you look at the confirmed cases, we had 300 cases, this year we already have 600 cases at this point."

Jules Vasquez
"You mean for all of last year had 300? And we already have 600 for this year?"

Lorna Perez
"So it has doubled basically at this point. So when you look at severe dengue people that have to be hospitalize for example because of the complications of dengue confirmed because a case has to be well established for us to say this is a case of severe dengue. So, we have 16 cases that we can say that we have verified and validated as having severe dengue which compared to last year, we had about 10 cases for the entire year last year and now this year we're just seeing that increase happening at this point already, we already are seeing 16 confirmed severe dengue cases."

So there are hundreds of Dengue cases confirmed, and only 16 cases of severe Dengue - which, fortunately, have not resulted in any fatalities. But, Honduras can’t say the same.  They have had fatalities.  Perez told us more about the regional picture including Quintana Roo:

Lorna Perez
"Overall Central America is experiencing an increase in the number of cases, they're in outbreak mode also with some severe cases presenting which has not been the norm and so places like Honduras for example having some fatalities related to severe dengue and when you look at overall our immediate neighbours we have for example in Mexico, the state of Quintana Roo has the highest incidents in the entire country which is our neighbour in the north."

Kim Bautista - Chief of Operations, Vector Control Unit
"Regionally the increase in cases started around 4th quarter in 2018. So what we receive around January, February this year is a forecast from the Caribbean Public Health Agency and from PAHO. What they do is a mathematical modelling looking at the incidents and see what type of the 4 serotype of dengue are in circulation. So in any given year you might have a combination of the 4 circulating or in some instances like in Guatemala, in Mexico and in Honduras the 4 types circulating. So what that does is it increases the likelihood of more persons being infected and it also increases the likelihood of severe cases of dengue."