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Threat of Dengue Outbreaks in Nepal in Context of COVID-19 Pandemics

Pallavi Koirala

 The world has been chained with Corona Virus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic today. It has affected more than 200 countries in just about a few months since December 2019. It is evident that different countries are going through this pandemic in different timelines. The official figures for Nepal till the date confirmed 12000 confirmed cases with 28 deaths. World health organization(WHO) had predicted that COVID- 19 might not die out and it could increase throughout the year. However, Nepal has been facing an outbreak of Dengue since 2010. During the last five years, yearly outbreak of dengue has been reported. The largest was in 2019 where more than 14,000 cases were detected including six deaths. The number of people affected in 2019 was nearly ten times more than in 2018 and the possible reasons for such a huge number of cases could be: i) New area affected by dengue involving 68 districts in the year 2019 in comparison to 45 districts in 2018 ii) Outbreak started early from May while previously the outbreak started from July along with monsoon and peaked at August-September post monsoon. Thus, this year, focus is required on prevention of severe outbreaks of Dengue in addition to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Due to mitigation efforts like lockdown and the focus on containment of the COVID-19 prevention, the dengue outbreak might get overshadowed and large outbreak remains a possibility. Dengue prevention activities targeting the endemic areas and also those areas which reported high cases last year is a need of time in addition to ongoing effort for COVID-19 management..