The Department of Health (DOH) is raising alarms over the significant surge in dengue cases in the Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR), which has eclipsed the number of cases in previous years.
Karen Lonogan, head of the DOH-Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR) Regional Epidemiology and Surveillance Unit (RESU), said that the increase in dengue cases in the first semester of the year has reached above 70 percent compared to the same time period last year.
There were 3,922 cases logged from January to June this year, almost double to the 2,287 recorded in the same period last year.
Meanwhile, 4 deaths due to dengue were recorded during both the first half of 2024 and the preceding year.
Majority of the cases are in Benguet, which accounts for nearly half of the case total at 1,545 cases. Baguio City has 984 cases, which is separate from the case count of Benguet. Together, the two account for 64 percent of the case total.
Upticks have also been detected regionwide, with cases increasing by as much as 149 percent in the case of Mountain Province.
According to Lonogan, the case increase has already breached the five-year epidemic threshold, or the frequency of cases that demand heightened response to the disease.
