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Hospitals in Bangladesh have reported 2,711 new cases of dengue fever in the latest daily count, taking the overall tally of infections to 57,127 this year.
The death toll rose to 273 as the mosquito-borne virus killed 12 more patients in the 24 hours to Wednesday morning, according to data published by the Directorate General of Health Services.
As many as 1,581 new cases have been detected outside Dhaka, but all the deaths occurred in the capital. On Wednesday morning, 9,325 dengue patients were in hospital care around the country, and 4,869 of them were in Dhaka, reports bdnews24.com.
The dengue outbreak has been worse in 2023 than in previous years.
Last year, hospitals reported 62,382 patients taking medical care, and the death toll stood at 281, the highest since the record-keeping began for dengue hospitalisations in the 1960s.
In 2019, Bangladesh witnessed over 100,000 dengue hospitalisations, a record number of cases in a single year. The official death toll that year was recorded at 179.
A pre-monsoon government-funded survey of Dhaka city has uncovered an alarming surge of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, known carriers of the dengue virus, fuelling the worst spread of the disease over the past five years.
Most of the deaths caused by dengue occurred due to haemorrhagic fever and shock syndrome, which health experts associated with some new variants of the deadly virus, previously undetected in Bangladesh.