The num­ber of deaths linked to the chikun­gun­ya virus is es­ti­mat­ed at 113. And all of the fa­tal­i­ties are re­port­ed in the Caribbean.

The lat­est fig­ures from the Pan-Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (PA­HO), which in­clude sta­tis­tics as of Sept. 12, con­firm the Caribbean re­gion's vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to the dis­ease.

The PA­HO re­port says, how­ev­er, that it was not yet clear if these deaths were di­rect­ly at­trib­ut­able to the virus.

Chikun­gun­ya it­self is not fa­tal but can re­sult in death when com­bined with oth­er se­ri­ous med­ical con­di­tions. Al­though all the vic­tims were in­fect­ed with the virus, health au­thor­i­ties said Chikun­gun­ya may not have been the main cause of death.

The Puer­to Ri­can Health De­part­ment was in­ves­ti­gat­ing whether two re­cent deaths were re­lat­ed to the virus, Fox News Lati­no re­port­ed.

PA­HO con­firmed 55 deaths linked to the virus in Mar­tinique since last De­cem­ber, when the dis­ease was first de­tect­ed in the French side of St Mar­tin.

Forty-nine deaths were re­port­ed in Guade­loupe, six in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and three in St. Mar­tin, where the virus was first found in the Amer­i­c­as.

A to­tal of 644,686 sus­pect­ed and 9,640 con­firmed Chikun­gun­ya cas­es have been re­port­ed in the re­gion as of Sept. 8, the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency, or CARPHA, said.

The re­gion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of tak­ing pre­ven­tive mea­sures to con­trol the breed­ing lo­ca­tions of the mos­qui­toes that trans­mit the two virus­es, es­pe­cial­ly at this time of year, the peak trans­mis­sion sea­son in the Caribbean due to in­creased rain­fall.