Dr. Guillermo Sequera, director of Health Surveillance. Photo: MSPYBS.
This Friday, more than 8,000 cases of chikungunya were confirmed at the country level, corresponding to the last 21 days. Asunción and several Central cities are the epicenter of the disease, spreading to the departments of Cordillera and Paraguarí.
“The last three weeks, the last 21 days, show us how we are now or how infections are happening now. In the last three weeks we had a little more than 8,000 confirmed cases of chikungunya and 80 of dengue. For every 1,000 cases of chikungunya we have one case of dengue“, confirmed at a press conference, Dr. Guillermo Sequera, head of Health Surveillance.
In this regard, he indicated that Asunction is the epicenter of the disease, since of the 8,000 confirmed, 90% are from the Asunción metropolitan area. In details, he said that the 10 capital neighborhoods with the most chikungunya infections are Loma Pytã, Santísima Trinidad, São Paulo, Obrero, Intendente B. Guggiari, Sajonia, Roberto L. Petitt, Nazareth, Republicano and Vista Alegre.
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Likewise, he confirmed that in the Central department, the city of San Lorenzo, is the town with the most cases and is followed by Fernando de la Mora, Lambaré and Luque. “When San Lorenzo becomes the epicenter, it spreads more easily to the surrounding departments.“He warned, noting that the epidemic is also taking the Cordillera and Paraguarí.
In the last week there were registered six more deaths from chikungunya, reaching 11 total deaths. Of the six deceased, four were older than 75 years and two less than one year.
Likewise, there are 81 hospitalized, of which 16 are in intensive care, five of them are babies less than a year old. equally, still It would be necessary to confirm if the 13-day-old baby who died yesterday at the Itauguá Hospital was due to chikungunya.
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The most affected age groups by the disease are from 2 to 39 years and 60 years or more.
“We had about 80 children under the age of 1 with chikungunya.
and the group that has the most are young adults (15 to 40 years old), practically 50% of the cases,” Sequera pointed out.
