BUENOS AIRES (CN) — Along with tens of thousands of other soccer fans, Javier Merediz had reserved February 25 for a special occasion.
His team, River Plate, was facing off against their rivals, the Boca Juniors, in a high-stakes soccer match between Argentina’s two most popular clubs. Merediz planned to attend the match at El Monumental, the largest stadium in Buenos Aires and all of South America.
Instead of cheering on River at the stadium, Merediz spent that Sunday afternoon nearly unable to get out of bed.
The culprit? A bad case of dengue, a mosquito-borne and occasionally fatal disease causing unprecedented numbers of infections across Latin America.
“I’m a die-hard River fan, and I didn’t make it to the stadium,” Merediz, a 46-year-old consultant who lives in Buenos Aires’ Palermo neighborhood with his family, said. “Imagine how bad I had to feel.”
The Americas are facing an alarming dengue outbreak — one shaping up to be the worst dengue season in history, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) announced Thursday.
Last year, the organization recorded an all-time high of 4.5 million cases for the region. So far this year, they have already recorded 3.5 million. That's three times the number of cases recorded in the same time period last year.
The surge is occurring across Latin America and the Caribbean, PAHO director Jarbas Barbosa said in a virtual press conference Thursday — though the lion’s share of dengue cases are taking place in Brazil, followed by Paraguay and Argentina.
In Brazil, epidemiologists predict cases will soar into the millions this year due to a number of factors, including the sea-warming phenomenon El Niño, a record-breaking heat wave and climate change.
Between the last week of July and the second week of March, Argentina’s health ministry recorded 151,310 cases of dengue. Of those, 106 were fatal — though experts say the actual case numbers are likely much higher, since the majority of infected people have mild symptoms.
That’s a steep increase, even compared to recent outbreaks. The ministry recorded just 16,023 cases over the same July to March time period during the 2022 to 2023 season, and 25,778 during the 2015 to 2016 season.
Dengue outbreaks are cyclical, said Anna Durbin, a Johns Hopkins University professor who studies dengue vaccines. That means the disease emerges for a year or two, depending on a range of environmental factors, then dissipates for a few years. The disease is also seasonal, peaking during the Southern Hemisphere’s hottest months.
Even accounting for those considerations, the state of dengue today is alarming and only getting worse.
“With global warming, more places are becoming hospitable environments for both the mosquitoes and the viruses, leading to larger populations that are at risk,” Durbin said. “It is going to spread.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) has assessed the risk of dengue to be “high globally” due to recent surges. Air travel has introduced a low number of dengue cases to places where it is not endemic, such as Italy, France and Spain.
On March 25, facing its own spike in dengue cases, Puerto Rico declared a public health emergency. Cases in the continental U.S. remain relatively low, though local spread has been reported in Florida, Texas, Arizona, and California.
Florida has reported 65 dengue cases so far in 2024, three of which were acquired locally. Experts predict that case counts in the U.S. will continue to climb in coming years.
Dengue is a viral infection spread to humans through the bite of infected mosquitoes, primarily from a species called Aedes aegypti that thrives in tropical climates.
The best way to prevent dengue, Durbin said, is to prevent mosquito bites. Use mosquito repellent, wear long-sleeve shirts and pants and don’t leave water lying around.
Most people infected with dengue develop mild symptoms that last a day or two. The estimated 25% of people who develop a bad case of dengue face a barrage of uncomfortable symptoms, including high fever, vomiting and rash.
Dengue can also cause painful muscle and joint aches, which is why it’s sometimes known as “breakbone fever.” In those cases, full recovery can take weeks.
In about 5% of infected people, the disease advances to a stage called severe dengue, which can cause shock and internal bleeding. Occasionally — and especially when untreated — severe dengue leads to death.
“I really underestimated the disease. I didn’t think much of it,” Merdiz, the River Plate fan, said. His brush with dengue left him unable to get out of bed for four days due to fever and aches, and it took him two weeks to completely recover.
“I think there’s a great lack of awareness of the disease,” Merdiz added, “which I can see now that I’m on the other side.”
The dengue virus has four variants, or serotypes.
This dengue season, Argentina’s health ministry has identified the presence of serotypes DENV-1 and DENV-2, as well as a few instances of DENV-3. Once a person overcomes one dengue infection, they develop long-term immunity to the specific serotype that infected them and short-term immunity to other serotypes.
That doesn’t mean they’re safe from a second infection. In fact, a second infection can be worse. If someone who already had dengue is reinfected by a different serotype once their immunity wears off, they are at a much higher risk of developing severe dengue than a first-time patient. That’s because antibodies from the first infection might bind to the second virus without killing it, acting like a “chaperone” that ends up strengthening the virus, Durbin said.
Both Argentina and Brazil have approved a vaccine to combat local dengue infections. Qdenga, a two-dose vaccine made by Japan’s Takeda Pharmaceutical Company, doesn’t protect from dengue entirely but is “very effective at preventing hospitalization,” Durbin said.
Neither Argentina nor Brazil have enough doses of the drug to meet demand. Brazil has started an emergency campaign to deliver the vaccine to children in areas with the highest dengue transmission. Meanwhile, in Argentina, a medical prescription is required to receive Qdenga, which is primarily being recommended for people who have already had dengue once.
In Argentina, accessing Qdenga costs the equivalent of around $140 — a tall order for people living under an annual inflation rate of 276.2%.
More than half of Argentina's population now finds itself living below the poverty line, following skyrocketing prices and dramatic depreciations in the value of the Argentine peso implemented by the government of President Javier Milei, a radical libertarian who was elected in December on a platform of so-called economic "shock therapy." To make matters worse, mosquito repellent is increasingly expensive and hard to track down in stores, local journalists report.
A glimmer of hope came recently at São Paulo’s Instituto Butantan, where a single-dose vaccine yielded promising clinical trial results and is on track to becoming approved. Following approval, the next hurdle will be efficient manufacturing and distribution.
“We really need a good dengue vaccine, and a lot of it,” Durbin said. “Right now, we don't have enough for everybody, and that's really the major problem.”
Subscribe to Closing Arguments
Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.
Additional Reads
-
Sudan war marks one-year anniversary April 15, 2024 -
