Caribbean chikungunya cases top 170,000

UMN.edu | June 16, 2014

The number of chikungunya cases in parts of the Caribbean continued to surge last week, pushing past 170,000 cases, with the first cases confirmed in El Salvador, west of the main outbreak area, and more imported cases detected in the United States and other countries.

The outbreak has grown to 170,566 suspected or confirmed cases of the mosquito-borne disease, which is 35,139 higher than the 135,427 cases reported the previous week, according to a Jun 13 report from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). The number of deaths remained the same, at 14.

Over the past few weeks, most new cases are suspected infections reported from the Latin Caribbean countries, such as the Dominican Republic, where suspected cases rose from 52,976 to 77,320 last week. Guadaloupe and Martinique also reported thousands of new cases, but no new case totals were given for Haiti, another country that has recently been hard hit by the outbreak.

In the non-Latin areas that were mainly affected earlier in the outbreak, new cases were reported by Dominica, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and the US Virgin Islands.

The outbreak started in December on the French side of St. Martin. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said Jun 13 in its weekly communicable disease threat update that nearly 150,000 probable and confirmed cases have been reported in the region, which was lower than PAHO's total. It added that most of the affected areas continue to report more cases, but especially Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Source: http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2014/06/caribbean-chikungunya-cases-top-170000