Venezuelan opposition José Manuel Olivares warned of a malaria epidemic in the north of the country: “The regime is not taking measures and is spreading very quickly”

Former Venezuelan opposition deputy and doctor José Manuel Olivares alerted this Friday of a malaria epidemic in the coastal state of La Guaira, neighboring Caracas, with about 40 cases.

“About 40 cases have been recorded and, so far, no health authority has taken noteOlivares wrote in a message on Twitter.

Malaria is a fatal disease. It is caused by a parasite of the genus Plasmodium which is hosted first in an Anopheles-type mosquito and, finally, by the bite of the insect, in humans.

In addition, “can be extended very quickly“, Warned the former parliamentarian.

“And today, a week after the first cases, no investigation or containment measure has yet been taken.», Denounced the opponent who has lived outside Venezuela for several years and did not detail how he obtained the information.

Olivares clarified that La Guaira “it is not a malaria zone“And the disease was”imported from the south of the country”.

“It is not enough to fumigate, it is also necessary to put in place effective measures to prevent new infections and prevent mosquito breeding.“, a point.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that in 2018 in Venezuela, 471,000 cases and 423 deaths were recorded, with a particular incidence of the disease in the southern state of Bolívar (border with Brazil), but the country has not released official figures for the disease since 2016, when it reported 245,000 cases and one death.

Venezuela was the first country to eradicate malaria, in 1961, as certified by the WHO, although the disease has been on the rise since 2017, especially in the south of the country.

The NGO Médecins sans frontières diagnosed and treated 43,019 cases in 2020 in the states of Anzoátegui, Bolívar and Sucre.

Coronavirus in Venezuela

Venezuela added 1,278 COVID-19 cases in past 24 hours, with what the total number of confirmed infections since the start of the pandemic in the country has reached 258,140, the Minister of Communication, Freddy Ñáñez reported on Friday.

“460 days after the pandemic, we report that in the past 24 hours, the country has recorded 1,278 new infections, all by community transmission,” áñez wrote on his social media account Twitter.

He explained that the entities with the highest number of cases that day were Carabobo with 206 infections, followed by Barinas with 182, Yaracuy with 181, Sucre with 108, Apure with 97, Zulia with 94 and Falcón with 64.

He also reported on the 19 people died product of this disease which caused a total of 2,925 deaths in the country since the start of the pandemic.

Four of the deaths were recorded in Apure, three in Caracas, two in Anzoátegui, Delta Amacuro, Nueva Esparta and Zulia, and one in Barinas, Carabobo, Aragua and Mérida.

With this data, the country has reached a total of 258,140 confirmed cases, of which 16,974 are active and 238,241 people have recovered.

Last Saturday, Venezuela has received a new batch of 500,000 doses of Russian vaccine Sputnik V against COVID-19, with which, added to those that have arrived previously, the Caribbean country has already received 3.23 million vaccines against disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

In this regard, the Minister of Health, Carlos Alvarado, assured Saturday that with the new batch, Venezuela already has “enough vaccines to vaccinate 13% of the target”, or 2.9 million people .

In this way, they hope to reach 22 million vaccines that will serve to immunize 70% of the Venezuelan population and thus achieve collective immunity.

(With information from EFE)

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