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So, with both COVID and Dengue in circulation - and mosquitoes swarming - how will frontline health workers know whether they should test sick persons for Dengue or COIVD first? The Director of Health Services took on that question today:

Dr. Marvin Manzanero - Director of Health Services
"The mosquito situation? We have noted the particular increase in numbers that are being reported to us. Vector Control is aware and Vector Control is monitoring the situation not only in Belize City where most of the concerns initially were from, but across the country. Please note also that we are doing this following dengue pattern, so this seems to be not just as I said in urban Belize City, but across all rural communities. We are also trying to do more targeting spraying. Ideally, we would want to spray everywhere but you will understand that we have limited resources in terms of trucks and human resources and the schedule, because it's not spraying one time, but you need to factor that you will have to come back and spray at a specific time. So we are also monitoring where the dengue cases are happening and those are becoming the priority areas where we are going to actually go and do the specific spraying process. Beyond that I think we need to stress also because we keep hearing about spraying, but understand that spraying is not the only solution to the mosquito situation. If we don't put our role as community, if you recall last year when we highlighted the dengue situation, earlier this year we said we have the potential same situation that could happen, but it has gotten caught up in the Covid-19 discussion. We had 10 deaths last year, we could have the same amount of deaths this year if we dont do a collective effort in trying to curtail the mosquito population. With the inevitable rise in mosquito borne diseases and have the same symptoms as Covid, which test would be done first, Covid-19 or dengue malaria? For right now if you don't have respiratory symptoms and we don't seem to have community transmission I would say that dengue first before I even consider malaria and then Covid-19."