Wednesday April 19, 2023 | 11:45 a.m.
National health authorities warned about Thai dengue, which could be circulating in the country and represents a variant that has a greater “lethal capacity” and that circulates at a higher speed, between which the mosquito becomes infected after biting an already infected person, and returns to bite another, which causes a greater capacity to transmit the disease.
For dengue to circulate, there must be an infected person who is bitten by a female Aedes aegypti mosquito, who in turn bites another person.
The speed with which this circuit is completed is key to whether the epidemic grows faster or slower. Therein lies the difference with Thai dengue.
For its part, serotype 2 is predominant in the current outbreak in Argentina and explains the fact that the dengue curve has grown so fast, surpassing the epidemics of 2016 and 2020 in speed.
The cases registered so far this season, more than 41,000, are already 27 percent above the 2016 epidemic and 48.4 percent of that of 2020.
On this subject, a report in the Journal of American Medicine and Hygiene differentiates between two of the four variants or genotypes that DENV-2 agglutinates. One of the genotypes is American (AM) and the other is Southeast Asian (SEA).
The second, originally from Thailand, was already described in America during the Cuban epidemic of 1981, which left many cases of hemorrhagic fever. It was subsequently identified in other countries in the region. The latest data from the Ministry of Health in Argentina report that more than 7 out of 10 dengue infections correspond to serotype 2, but do not delve into the genotype. It is known, according to a work by the Fundación Huésped, that in the period 2021-2022 the SEA variant was already circulating in an incipient way in the country.
growing cases
The increasing cases of hemorrhagic fever have caused the number of deaths in the country to rise this season to a record of 39 in nine provinces, which would also be an indicator that the genotype of the virus circulating in the country is the most dangerous among the possible for DENV-2.
The map of confirmed deaths -until Monday night- for each district is distributed as follows: Salta (10), Tucumán (9), Santa Fe (7), Jujuy (6), Córdoba (2), Ciudad de Buenos Aires (2), Buenos Aires (1), Entre Ríos (1) and Santiago del Estero (1).
Health emergency
The government of Santiago del Estero declared a health emergency yesterday due to the increase in dengue cases, which reach 5,500 in 25 of the 27 provincial departments, the local Health Minister, Natividad Nassif, informed Télam.
“Twenty-five of the 27 departments are affected by the presence of dengue, in about 12 there are outbreaks and the rest are in circulation,” Nassif said in an interview with this agency. The declaration of a health emergency “is very important” to “make decisions and actions quickly”, which is what “a pandemic situation such as the one we are going through with the presence of dengue demands to address it in a timely and effective manner,” he added. .
Nassif said that the weather, with rainy days, “is not helping” and indicated that “weather conditions have a lot to do with creating favorable environments for the proliferation” of the Aedes Aegypti mosquito that transmits dengue. Regarding the state of the patients, the minister stated that “there are hospitalizations in rooms, in ICUs and ICUs, and there are brief hospitalizations where they are stabilized.”
He also assured that “the DEN1 and DEN 2 serotypes are circulating” and said that the latter is very virulent and aggressive, which causes serious cases.
On the other hand, the Ministry of Health of Mendoza confirmed this Tuesday the first autochthonous case of dengue in the province, after which it called on the population to take preventive measures such as covering water tanks and reservoirs and turning all the containers they contain upside down. can contain water, among other care.
