Dengue Fever Alert Raised Amid Covid-19 Outbreak

Health officials on Wednesday raised concern about an outbreak of dengue fever, saying battling the mosquito-borne disease along with coronavirus would create new problems.

This comes after an 84-year-old resident of Yuen Long came down with dengue well before the onset of the rainy season.

The Centre for Health Protecion reported no new local cases of Covid-19 for a second consecutive day, but added four more cases involving people who recently returned from overseas, taking the city's total tally to 1,016.

Dr Chuang Shuk-kwan said the dengue case has come much earlier in the year than usual.

The patient works at his own farm and health officials were to visit the site to carry out investigations.

Chuang urged the public to step up anti-mosquito measures.

“We’re very worried as mosquitoes that can transmit the disease are present in Hong Kong and can lead to a large-scale outbreak,” she said.

“It’ll be problematic if we have to deal with outbreaks of dengue fever and coronavirus at the same time,” she said.

One of the new coronavirus patients is a 60-year-old woman who had recently been in Morocco.

She tested negative for the virus last Friday in Guangzhou after taking a flight chartered by mainland authorities.

But she found blood in her stool after coming back to Hong Kong.

Chuang said a false negative is common in coronavirus tests. She said it might also be due to the long incubation period of the disease.

The other three new patients had recently come back from the UK and the Netherlands.