More than 47,000 people are hospitalized in Cuba for dengue or chikungunya

Havana.- A total of 47,125 people are currently hospitalized in Cuba with symptoms of dengue or chikungunya, the country's health authorities reported this Wednesday.

This figure represents more than double the more than 20,000 cases that the Cuban government had recognized up to that moment, which for the first time used the word "epidemic" last week to designate the outbreak of these two arboviruses throughout the country.

The national director of Epidemiology of the Ministry of Public Health, Francisco Durán, stated that, only on Tuesday, the health system registered 1,706 new suspected cases of dengue or chikungunya, and that a total of 3,226 patients were admitted. He clarified that 84.1% of admissions are at home. He also assured that only due to chikungunya, 126 people are currently hospitalized as serious, critical or in intensive care, and that a total of 19 minors are currently in intensive care and in critical condition due to complications linked to this disease.

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He affirmed that due to the number of cases and their symptoms, which include high fevers and intense joint pain, this disease is the main health problem on the island today. He also acknowledged that the figures for detected cases are only an underreporting and do not represent the real number of infected people, because many people do not go to medical centers. Cuba identified 15,590 cases of chikungunya between October 11 and November 1 and accumulated 20,062 in the first ten months of the year, according to the latest data available from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). With this total figure, the cumulative incidence of chikungunya in Cuba was 183.43 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, the highest in all the Americas this year, above Brazil (112.07) and the averages for the Caribbean (43.53) and the entire continent (26.00).