SAO PAULO — Two health experts published an essay in the New England Journal of Medicine, highlighting the unusual high number of yellow fever injections in Brazil. The outbreak mostly affect rural areas in the southeastern part of the country. There have been 371 confirmed cases.
The virus was primarily spread by forest-dwelling mosquitoes to monkeys. But an increasing number of people in the jungle have been infected, triggering the outbreak.
There is concern that some of the infected people will travel to urban areas and spread the virus to city-dwelling Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which are the same species that transmit Zika virus. The mosquitoes could then start spreading the disease in urban areas.
“It’s critical that nations have the capacity to quickly detect and control these outbreaks in order to decrease the illness and death and prevent the spread to other locations,” Erin Staples, a medical epidemiologist at the CDC told the Washington Post.
According to CNN, the fatality rate for the outbreak is 33% for confirmed cases and 11% for suspected cases. Yellow fever cannot be cured but there is a highly effective vaccine for the virus.
