After suffering the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, Araraquara (273 km from São Paulo) faces a dengue epidemic in 2022 that has already resulted in more than 5,000 cases of the disease and ten deaths.
The scenario made the city hall reopen the field hospital that was used to fight the coronavirus and spread traps to fight the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which transmits the disease, throughout the city.
The total number of deaths already exceeds the last year of the epidemic in the city, 2019, when 23,134 cases of the disease were recorded, of which 16,911 were in the first quarter, with seven deaths.
5,423 cases have already been recorded this year, with a predominance of type 1 dengue circulation. The disease has four subtypes and those infected are only immunized against the type they contracted.
“We spread 960 traps in the city to capture the mosquito. This helps to identify if the mosquito has the dengue virus and where it is circulating”, said the secretary of Health of Araraquara, Eliana Honain.
The field hospital was reopened on March 15th as a dengue care center, to serve patients from 7 am to 9 pm with consultations, exams and rehydration.
According to the secretary, the factors that contributed to the return of the dengue epidemic are the fact that the city integrates a region that has characteristics conducive to the mosquito, the cyclical regime of the disease and the population susceptible to type 1 of the disease.
“The last epidemic was with type 2 and now we have type 1. And we also had problems from the pandemic. Covid.”
Even so, according to her, more than 400,000 visits were made to properties in the city last year, which concentrate 80% of mosquito breeding sites.
Cross country
The Araraquara scenario does not differ much from the national scenario. In just four months, Brazil recorded almost the same total number of cases as last year. There were 542 thousand notifications, compared to 544 thousand in 2021, according to the Ministry of Health.
Compared with the first quarter of last year, 2022 represented a 113% increase in cases, according to the ministry’s epidemiological bulletin.
Home visits this year have become a problem for some residents, as Vector Control has identified scammers who are pretending to be agents to enter the properties and commit thefts.
According to the agency, the orientation is that residents pay attention to the identification of agents before releasing access to properties. Employees wear gray T-shirts and brown vests and circulate in official cars.
“The fight does not depend only on the public power. We depend on the union of everyone to eliminate the mosquito, that’s the only way we will succeed”, said the secretary.
Among the symptoms of dengue are fever, pain (in the head, body and behind the eyes) and red spots on the body.
state
In a note, the State Department of Health reported that, from the beginning of January to the last day of May, 107,400 cases of dengue were recorded in the state, of which 77 people died. In the same period of 2021, there were 104 thousand cases of the disease and 41 deaths.
According to the government’s calculations, the city of Votuporanga was the one that recorded the most cases so far, with 6,600 notifications of the disease. After Araraquara, the cities with the most records are: São José do Rio Preto (4.8 thousand), São Paulo (4.1 thousand) and Birigui (3.7 thousand).
Also according to data from the State Department of Health, the city of Americana has already reported four deaths from the disease. Following in the number of deaths are América Brasiliense, Birigui and General Salgado, each with three cases.
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