Dr. Guillermo Sequera, Director General of Surveillance of the Ministry of Health, reported that chikungunya cases are progressively dispersing in the interior of the country, mainly in the departments of Alto Paraná and Guairá, where there is the greatest “weight of the epidemic”, outside Central and Capital.
Sequera, although he recognized that at the beginning of the year there was a progressive increase in cases in Asunción and Central, at the end of February this began to decrease, in contrast to what is currently happening in some areas of the interior of the country, where the increase in the number of notifications is recorded.
“In the last three weeks we had almost 15,000 cases of chikungunya, we remain at a plateau of cases that would be 5,000 nationwide,” Sequera said this Friday, during the weekly press conference of the health portfolio that took place at the headquarters ministerial.
In this sense, he said that in the Central department there are around 8,000 weekly notifications and Capital “much more”, he assured at the time of specifying that 49 percent of the cases are in these two areas.
Luque, San Lorenzo, Lambaré, Capiatá, Limpio and Mariano Roque Alonso, are the districts hardest hit by the virus in the Central department. “We are also with cases of dengue in Central, there are few cases but we have, mainly in Limpio,” he pointed out.
Cases on the rise in the interior of the country
In the northern departments of the country, that is, San Pedro, Concepción, Canindeyú and Amambay, it denotes a “slight progressive increase”, with the latter department being the most prominent.
In the southern axis, high numbers are also observed, as an example, he specified that in Paraguarí there are about 3,500 weekly notifications, while the department of Itapúa is marking an increase. “In the Chaco we also had cases, in Presidente Hayes and part of its metropolitan area with even higher cases, Alto Paraguay and Boquerón do not escape that,” he explained.
Likewise, he mentioned that the greater weight of the epidemic except Central and Capital; It is taking place in the area of Alto Paraná (Ciudad del Este) and Guairá. “It is perhaps one of the regions with the highest incidence in the interior of the country, there are many cases for the number of inhabitants that Guairá has,” he expressed.
Along the same lines, he did not rule out that in the coming weeks the largest number of patients will be concentrated in the interior of the country. “We are concerned about Alto Paraná because many of the cases are not notified, which means that it could be even higher if everything is notified,” she claimed.
Regarding the most affected age group, there are people between 20 and 39 years of age, with 30 percent, followed by the group of 60 years and over, with 20 percent. It continues to be predominant in the female sex (59%).
Hospitalized and deceased
Regarding those hospitalized, he mentioned that as of March 30 there were almost 900 beds occupied by suspected cases of chikungunya, of which 209 were finally confirmed. Of this number, 28 patients are in intensive care, 11 of them are under one year of age.
“We reached 70 deaths, plus one who died at the end of 2021. We can say that we have 71 deaths in this wave, so far. Almost 40 percent are over 60 years old, we also have 70 and 80-year-olds, who are mainly men, ”he explained.
The professional warned that we are facing a disease that is a main problem for children, unlike the coronavirus, which mostly affects the elderly. “It is an epidemic that is affecting children more, children under one month are dying, we must return to the use of mosquito nets,” he stressed.
On the other hand, he insisted on the importance of eliminating mosquito breeding sites to mitigate the impact of arboviral diseases. “The real fight is against mosquitoes, that is why we must insist on the elimination of breeding sites, because as long as we have many mosquitoes this will continue like this,” he stressed.