Due to the large number of suspected dengue cases in Porto Alegre, the city has had to restrict testing for the disease. The shortage of the exam, which occurs across the country according to the Municipal Health Service (SMS), has led to a decrease in demand, which continues to be conducted in the capital, but for specific cases. According to the latest epidemiological bulletin, 2,304 suspected cases were reported in the city in the past week, of which 1,650 (71.6%) were confirmed. So far, they have been Twelve deaths from the disease have been recorded in Rio Grande do Sul.

Testing is still applied to severe cases, with warning signs, requiring hospitalization or clinically seriously ill, in pregnant women, children up to five years of age, people living in neighborhoods where dengue is not common, and travelers. “The problem, which affects the entire diagnostic area, is a national problem and is occurring, perhaps as a reflection of the post-pandemic process that we are still going through. The sector coordinator responsible for SMS tests, Gabriel Serra Brihm, explained that the laboratory area, like other areas, was significantly affected. Large. Biomedical reports indicate that the rates recorded by Porto Alegre are unprecedented.” In 2019, the year of the last dengue outbreak in the city, the central lab performed just over 900 tests. This year, so far, we have conducted more than 4,000 tests,” he says.

Gabriel points out that because it is not transmission by people, it is not the massive spread in the streets as Covid-19 cools that has caused the increase in cases of dengue transmitted by mosquito bite. Aedes aegypti. “We repeat that there is no shortage of tests in Porto Alegre. We are regulating the stockpile and we believe that the restriction, which is happening so that there is no shortage of tests in the city, will last a few weeks,” says SMS Biomedical. Outbreaks of dengue fever in the capital occur in the neighborhoods of Jardim Carvalho, Cristal, Bom Jesus, Agronomia, Vila Nova, Ipanema, São José and Partignon.