NewsDesk @bactiman63

The latest report from the General Directorate of Health Surveillance indicates that, in the last three weeks,  12,189 cases of chikungunya have been reported.

90% of the cases of chikungunya continue to be concentrated in the metropolitan area, San Lorenzo (1461), Capiatá (805), Lambaré (785), Fernando de la Mora (735) and Luque (712) as the localities with the highest number of confirmed cases of the disease.

At the level of the country’s capital, Barrio Obrero (148), Sajonia (139), Santísima Trinidad (134), San Vicente (133) and Loma Pyta (119) appear as the main areas with confirmed cases of chikungunya.

There are 215 people hospitalized for laboratory-confirmed chikungunya, of which 36 remain in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), 15 of them children under 1 year of age. Dr. Guillermo Sequera, general director of Health Surveillance, explained about the latest figures related to those hospitalized for the disease that “practically half of the cases are of very young children, one year old or less; and the other half are people aged 55 and over.

Regarding the number of deaths from chikungunya, a total of 28 fatalities were recorded. Among them, there are five children under one year of age (1 girl and 4 boys) and 19 people over 60 years of age.

The general director of Health Surveillance says for women who have recently given birth need to remain in hospitals for a few more days to verify that they do not present symptoms of chikungunya. He stressed that there are many cases of newborn children suffering from the disease. In this sense, he urged the doctors that, given the suspicion of a possible picture of the disease, the patient and the newborn child remain 4 to 7 more days in the health service to carry out the corresponding studies before come back home.

Chikungunya Virus (CHIKV) was confirmed in the year 2015, where specific outbreaks were recorded in some departments, in recent years.

In the years 2015 (4,297 cases) and 2016 (924 cases) they were concentrated in the metropolitan area (Asunción and Central) and the year 2018 (1,239 cases) was concentrated in the department of Amambay.

From 2015 to 2021, no deaths due to chikungunya were recorded in Paraguay.

Currently, the circulating genotype is the East Central South African (ECSA), which was identified by
first time in 2018, in an outbreak that occurred in Amambay, and identified again in samples from 2022 in the Metropolitan Area of Asunción.

Since EW 40 (October) of the year 2022, when the current CHIKV epidemic began in Paraguay, a total of 29,362 chikungunya cases have been reported, with 2,401 cases requiring hospitalization. 94 cases in those of neonatal age have been confirmed.