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JAKARTA: The Indonesian Ministry of Health drew attention to the fact that the number of dengue fever cases daily arising throughout the nation ranged from 100 to up to 500.

“If we look at the total figure, the number of dengue fever cases throughout Indonesia reaches 68 thousand,” the ministry’s Director of Vector and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, Dr Siti Nadia Tarmizi, stated here.

Tarmizi pointed out that dengue fever cases usually peaked every March, albeit in 2020, the number of cases had continued to rise until June.

“This means that such an occurrence is something quite different from the previous years,” Tarmizi stated.

Moreover, the Ministry of Health’s analysis unearthed a crucial observation that provinces recording a high number of Covid-19 cases also tended to register a spike in dengue fever cases.

These provinces include West Java, Lampung, East Nusa Tenggara (NTT), East Java, Central Java, Yogyakarta, and South Sulawesi. More specifically, of the 460 districts and cities, with reported dengue fever cases, 439 of them also registered Covid-19 cases.

“Hence, this appears to indicate a trend of double infection,” she stated.

Of the total 68 thousand dengue fever cases, the Ministry of Health had recorded a mortality rate of 346 persons, especially in provinces with high number of Covid-19 cases. The first case of dengue fever was discovered in the country in 1968, and during that time, the situation was not much different from what it is now in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, she emphasised.

“The mortality rate and morbidity rate are 50 percent,” she remarked.

Currently, the government was able to reduce the mortality rate owing to dengue fever to below one percent, while it has set its sights on realising a zero mortality rate.

Tarmizi recalled that Indonesia had experienced an extraordinary infection outbreak in 2016, as the morbidity rate was quite high.

“Prior to the 2016 dengue fever outbreak, the morbidity rate was below 20 percent, lest the 2016 incident recurs,” she remarked.