Previous Story
‘2nd dengue victim stable’
The second dengue patient recorded in the Commonwealth this year remains in stable condition, according to the Commonwealth Health Care Corp. yesterday.
CHCC spokesperson Zoe Travis said the patient is still recovering from the disease but is in stable condition.
Similar to the first case, the second patient has also just returned from a trip to Palau, where dengue is prevalent right now, and CHCC expects the patient to make a full recovery. She said CHCC is implementing the same procedures it did with the first patient in order to assure that the dengue fever does not spread and to limit any chance of an outbreak occurring in the CNMI.
“It takes a matter of days to fully recover [from dengue],” Travis said.
CHCC assures that there is still no evidence that on-island transmission of dengue has occurred and it believes that the chances of an outbreak remain low.
CHCC confirmed its first dengue fever case last Aug. 9. Once the patient reported symptoms of dengue fever, CHCC quarantined the patient to keep any means of spreading the fever as remote as possible.
The Guam Department of Public Health and Social Services reported last Sunday another case of dengue fever. The individual recently returned from a trip to Yap.
DPHSS reported that there is no dengue outbreak and dengue virus transmission is not occurring in Guam. It reported a total of 41 cases from 1988 to 2018, with the DPHSS reporting two cases this year.
Guam will likely continue to see additional suspected and confirmed dengue fever cases this year from immigrants, migrants, and residents who travel back and forth to countries that have dengue fever outbreaks.
CHCC urges the CNMI to “Fight the Bite” by taking precautions of avoiding mosquito bites. They approximate that one in four people will become sick and it usually does not require hospitalization.
“It is best that the CNMI stays vigilant of the dengue fever as we work to remove every possibility of an outbreak to occur,” Travis said.
