Macau has recorded this year’s first imported case of dengue fever, the Health Bureau (SSM) announced at the weekend.
According to an SSM statement on Saturday, the patient is a 30-year-old female mainlander who lives in San Cheong Building on Avenida do Conselheiro Ferreira de Almeida.
The woman visited Thailand and Malaysia with her husband between June 18 and July 5, during which she came down with a fever, headache and fatigue on July 2, the statement said.
After returning to Macau on Wednesday night, the woman had stayed at her home here before travelling to Zhuhai via the Qingmao checkpoint the next day, the statement said.
As her symptoms persisted, the woman went to a health centre in Zhuhai’s Jinwan district for treatment on Friday, where she tested positive for dengue fever, after which she was transferred to a hospital in the district for isolation treatment. The woman was in a stable condition at the time of Saturday’s statement.
The statement said that the woman’s husband, who travelled to Thailand and Malaysia with her, had not come down with dengue symptoms.
The statement underlined that the Macau Health Bureau has classified the woman’s case as an imported case of dengue fever after considering her travel history and the time of the onset of her symptoms, as well as the laboratory test results in Zhuhai.
The Health Bureau has carried out measures to eradicate mosquitoes in the area around the patient’s home in Macau.
27 imported cases in 2019
In 2019, the pre-COVID-19 pandemic year, Macau recorded a total of 27 cases of dengue fever, all of which were classified as imported.
Before the new case that was announced by the Health Bureau on Saturday, Macau had only recorded one dengue fever case, which was also classified as imported, since the COVID-19 pandemic began to affect the city in early 2020, namely a case that was detected on February 11, 2020.
This means that Macau did not record any cases of dengue fever in 2021 and 2022.
