Chikungunya rises in Caribbean as US notes imported cases

Chikungunya rises in Caribbean as US notes imported cases.

Via CIDRAP, Lisa Schnirring writes: Chikungunya rises in Caribbean as US notes imported cases. Excerpt:

The pace of chikungunya cases in some Caribbean outbreak hot spots continues and topped 135,000 last week, as US officials today announced three new imported cases. 

Last week the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) reported that most of the new cases were from the Latin regions of the Caribbean, with Guadeloupe, Martinique, and the French part of St. Martin all reporting new suspected and confirmed cases. 

The number of chikungunya cases has risen to 135,427 suspected or confirmed cases, which is 28,003 higher than the 107,424 cases reported the previous week, according to a Jun 6 PAHO report. The number of deaths from the disease held steady at 14. 

Almost two thirds of the new cases involve suspected infections from the Dominican Republic and Haiti. The number of illnesses in the Dominican Republic climbed by 14,337, to 52,976 last week, while the number in neighboring Haiti climbed by 5,490, to 11,802.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), which has been tracking the outbreak in the Caribbean since it began in the French side of St. Martin in December, reported similar numbers, though its totals for the Dominican Republic and Haiti were much lower than in PAHO's report.


The ECDC said there have been more than 100,000 suspected cases in the region and at least 14 deaths. It said an increasing number of cases have been reported from most of the affected areas.

WHO Chikungunya fact sheet.