The Brazilian city declared a state of health emergency on Monday while the carnival is due to begin this Friday for eight days.
Here is an unforeseen event which could dictate another tempo. In Brazil, the city of Rio de Janeiro was declared a state of health emergency at the start of the week due to a dengue epidemic. Bad timing since the carnival must be held from this Friday until Saturday February 17.
Mayor Eduardo Paes announced the measure to stem the spread of the mosquito-borne disease, which causes flu-like symptoms and can lead to death in extreme cases, the channel explains. CNN Brazil.
This epidemic is causing “great concern” on site, in the words of the municipal health secretary, Daniel Soranz, last Friday. In 2024, Rio has already recorded more than 11,200 cases of dengue fever, according to the city’s epidemiological observatory, or almost half of the contaminations for the whole of last year (23,000) in just five weeks.
In January alone, 362 people were hospitalized in Rio because of dengue, a record that exceeds the previous one from 2008, reports the Brazilian media. To curb its spread, the city said it would open 10 health centers across Rio and the Health Ministry set up an emergency center to coordinate operations, according to Reuters.
No more mosquitoes with El Niño
While millions of carnival-goers are preparing to parade through the streets of Rio and celebrate pre-Lenten festivities throughout Brazil, this sharp increase could be explained by the rise in temperatures, while very hot weather had been recorded in the country, and particularly in Rio, at the end of 2023.
“Record heat and above-average precipitation since last year have increased outbreaks of mosquito transmission,” Brazilian Health Minister Nísia Trindade said in a statement on Tuesday. a statement.
Speaking on Wednesday in Brasilia, the director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, estimated that the epidemic was “fueled by El Niño”, a climatic phenomenon which originates in the ocean Pacific and influences the weather on a global scale.
According to the WHO, the number of cases of dengue fever worldwide has increased eightfold over the past twenty years, driven by rising temperatures and the proliferation of rainy seasons.
A nationwide vaccination campaign
“It is time to intensify care and prevention. It is time for all of Brazil to unite against dengue,” wrote Nísia Trindade. Rio is the third state to have declared a public health emergency over the disease, after Minas Gerais – the second most populous state – and the Federal District, where the capital Brasilia is located.
365,000 cases of dengue fever have been reported in the country in 2024, four times more than during the same period last year, according to the Ministry of Health. Forty deaths have been confirmed. Furthermore, of the 5 million cases recorded worldwide last year, nearly 3 million were in Brazil, according to WHO data.
So much so that the country plans to launch a mass vaccination campaign. It is the first to offer a dengue vaccine in the public health system, with local authorities approving the product in March 2023.
“Vaccination will be carried out gradually, given the limited number of doses produced by the manufacturing laboratory,” Nísia Trindade said in her statement. “At the same time, the Ministry of Health will coordinate a national effort to increase production and access to dengue vaccines.”
The ministry plans to vaccinate 3.2 million people in 2024, starting with children aged 10 to 14, with the Qdenga vaccine from Japanese manufacturer Takeda.
In Brasilia, vaccinations will begin as early as this Friday, while Rio’s municipal health department said it also plans to launch them quickly. It remains to be seen whether the carnival will not accelerate contamination.