MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Second case of local dengue reported in Uruguay

It was a different subtype of dengue from the one announced last Friday, Uruguay's Health Ministry explained

Uruguayan health authorities confirmed Monday the second case of autochthonous dengue in the country, it was reported in Montevideo.

 

 

”Today, a second case of dengue was confirmed by the Department of Public Health Laboratory in a person who had no history of travel outside the country, and where the technique carried out allowed us to know that the Dengue serotype, in this case, was different from the previous case (DEN-2) is DEN-1,“ the Health Ministry said in a statement after the first such infection was made public last Friday.

The patient was an adult resident in the rural area of Montevideo, who is currently hospitalized and progressing stably, according to local media.

Uruguay is ”facing the circulation of at least two serotypes of the four serotypes that have currently been confirmed in neighboring countries,“ the Ministry's document went on. ”This finding is relevant not only because of the occurrence of a second case in two remote areas of the same department (Montevideo) but also because the risk of infection and/or complications during the course of the disease may be increased,” it added.

The country had not recorded any case of autochthonous dengue since 2020 while 3 of them were verified in 2023.

Argentina

In neighboring Argentina, 37 people have died so far this year due to this disease, of which 57,461 cases were reported from January to the third week of February this year, a 2,153% increase against the same period in 2023 when 2,550 detections were confirmed.

Despite this scenario, the Government of Javier Milei is not planning to make vaccination mandatory because although the Japanese-developed Qdenga immunizer from the Takeda laboratories “was authorized by [the National Administration of Medicines, Food, and Medical Technology] Anmat during the previous administration, it has not yet been validated as a strategy to prevent the spread of the disease,” Presidential Spokesman Manuel Adorni explained.

“The World Health Organization (WHO) has even indicated that there is insufficient evidence about its effectiveness,” he added.

Takeda's TAK-003 drug known as Qdenga was approved in April 2023 and has been available since Nov. 1, 2023. However, it is only applied under medical prescription.

Brazil

In an article published last Friday by the scientific magazine Nature, Marcia Castro, a public health specialist at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts, maintained that “the [Takeda] vaccine is not going to resolve the problem [in Brazil] now.”

However, Castro was hopeful about a vaccine under development at São Paulo's Butantan Institute, which in a large clinical trial, demonstrated an overall efficacy of 80% against symptomatic dengue with a single dose, although “its effectiveness against DENV-3 and DENV-4 is unclear, because those subtypes did not circulate widely during the study period,” Nature's report noted. Qdenga has an overall efficacy of 73% against symptomatic dengue. Results were more promising against DENV-1 and DENV-2 than for DENV-3. For DENV-4, the efficacy data are inconclusive.

In addition, the Qdenga drug is not widely available. So far, its distribution has been limited to 521 municipalities and for children aged 10 and 11.

“Other technologies to prevent dengue are modified mosquitoes carrying the Wolbachia bacterium, which reduces the insect’s capacity to transmit some viruses. Mosquitoes infected with Wolbachia have been released in several cities in Brazil, resulting in a local decrease in dengue cases,” Nature also pointed out.

The World Mosquito Program announced plans to release modified mosquitoes in many of Brazil’s urban areas over the next ten years in partnership with the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz).