Three more peo­ple have died from dengue fever.

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Health, the num­ber of lab­o­ra­to­ry-con­firmed deaths now stands at 16.

Un­like with COVID-19, the Min­istry of Health does not give in­for­ma­tion on the de­ceased.

The Min­istry said there were 1,315 con­firmed cas­es of dengue.

There has been no up­date to the Min­istry’s Sep­tem­ber 5 up­date, which said 914 home­own­ers or home oc­cu­pants had been is­sued yel­low fever no­tices, which re­quire them to clean their premis­es.

Out of those, 43 could face le­gal pro­ceed­ings for non-com­pli­ance with the or­der.

The Min­istry re­minds the pub­lic that dengue fever is spread by the bite of an in­fect­ed Aedes Ae­gyp­ti mos­qui­to. Symp­toms typ­i­cal­ly ap­pear be­tween five and six days af­ter a bite and can last for 1-2 weeks. Com­mon symp­toms in­clude:

- Fever

- Se­vere headaches

- Pain be­hind the eyes

- Mus­cle and joint pain

- Skin rash

- Nau­sea or vom­it­ing

- Di­ar­rhoea

Any­one ex­pe­ri­enc­ing these symp­toms should seek im­me­di­ate med­ical at­ten­tion at a health fa­cil­i­ty or their doc­tor.

To com­bat Dengue and oth­er mos­qui­to-borne ill­ness­es, the min­istry urges cit­i­zens to re­duce mos­qui­to breed­ing sites by:

1. Dis­pos­ing of items that can col­lect wa­ter, such as derelict ve­hi­cles or ap­pli­ances.

2. Cov­er­ing wa­ter con­tain­ers like tanks and bar­rels with mos­qui­to-proof cov­er­ings.

3. Cut­ting down over­grown veg­e­ta­tion that may shel­ter mos­qui­toes.

4. Clean­ing drains and gut­ters to pre­vent wa­ter stag­na­tion.

5. Us­ing mos­qui­to nets and in­sect re­pel­lent for per­son­al pro­tec­tion.

The Min­istry em­pha­sis­es that vig­i­lant source re­duc­tion is the most ef­fec­tive way to com­bat the spread.