Luke Taylor BogotáHealth authorities in Brazil are rushing out limited supplies of a recently approved vaccine as they struggle to contain an unprecedented surge in dengue fever. Brazil has recorded 512 000 dengue cases so far this year—more than three times the number recorded for the same period last year. “We may see the largest number of dengue cases on record this year,” Fabiano Duarte Carvalho, a biologist at Brazil’s public health research institute, the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), told Bloomberg. “The climate crisis has a direct impact on the proliferation of vectors such as Ae aegypti.”Around three quarters of dengue cases are symptomless but the disease can be fatal. Symptoms include headaches, fever, and intense joint pain while serious cases can take several weeks to recover from.
