NEA warns that Singapore is still in the traditional peak dengue season and it anticipates an upward trend of cases in the coming months.
There have been more than 500 dengue locations reported in Singapore as in 8 August, according to the latest figures from National Environment Agency’s (NEA) dengue website.
NEA has mapped the clusters of the dengue cases and operationally, a dengue cluster indicates a locality with active transmission where intervention is targeted.
It is formed when two or more cases have onset within 14 days and are located within 150m of each other (based on residential and workplace addresses as well as movement history).
The clusters are categorised according to their current status. A list of preventive actions also accompanies each alert level. There are 3 alert levels:
- High-risk area with 10 or more cases
- High-risk area with less than 10 cases
- No new cases, under surveillance for the next 21 days
Since 19 June up till 5 August this year, the number of the dengue cases is a total of 1577, that is an average of 225 cases per week :
- 19 June – 25 June 214
- 26 June – 2 July 234
- 3 July – 9 July 246
- 10 July – 16 July 223
- 17 July – 23 July 266
- 24 July – 30 July 222
- 31 July – 5 August 172
NEA warns that while the number of cases have been trending down the past couple of weeks, Singapore is still in the traditional peak dengue season and that it is anticipating an upward trend of cases in the coming months.
Experts also have warned that it could come to a record 30,000 cases in 2016, surpassing the high of 22,000 cases recorded in 2013, based on the speed of infections in the start of the year.
Earlier on 4 August, a 79-year old man who was living in a dengue hot spot, died from dengue fever.