T&T record­ed 123 con­firmed cas­es of dengue for this year, with Coun­ty Ca­roni hav­ing the high­est num­ber of cas­es, fol­lowed by Coun­ty Vic­to­ria and Coun­ty St Patrick.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia, the Min­istry of Health as­sured there was an ad­e­quate sup­ply of chem­i­cals for mos­qui­to spray­ing.

Giv­ing a break­down of sta­tis­tics, the min­istry said there were 43 con­firmed dengue cas­es for May, 31 cas­es for April, 19 cas­es for March, 13 cas­es for Feb­ru­ary and 17 cas­es for Jan­u­ary. 

Coun­ty Ca­roni ac­count­ed for 31 per cent of cas­es, Vic­to­ria had 29 per cent of cas­es while St Patrick had 23 per cent of cas­es. St George East had 10 per cent of cas­es, St George West had four per cent and St An­drew/ St David had three per cent of cas­es.

The min­istry said the In­sect Vec­tor Con­trol De­part­ment was util­is­ing mul­ti­ple spray­ing meth­ods to erad­i­cate the adult mos­qui­to pop­u­la­tion.

These in­clude In­door Resid­ual Spray­ing (IRS) where an in­sec­ti­cide is sprayed on the hard sur­faces of a home or build­ing and usu­al­ly has an ef­fect for up to three months. 

There is al­so Ther­mal Fog­ging in which a hand-held de­vice is used to ap­ply chem­i­cals around build­ings and oth­er open spaces. The min­istry said the IVCD al­so con­ducts Ul­tra Low Vol­ume Spray­ing (ULV) - done by a truck-mount­ed de­vice which can ap­ply in­sec­ti­cide to large out­door spaces.

The min­istry al­so ad­vised cit­i­zens to take proac­tive steps to elim­i­nate mos­qui­to breed­ing grounds in flower pot saucers, vas­es, tyres, buck­ets, bar­rels, plas­tic drums, and wa­ter stor­age con­tain­ers.

"These items al­so in­clude gut­ter­ing and drains, which should be reg­u­lar­ly cleaned, re­moved, turned over, or treat­ed as nec­es­sary. It must be not­ed that any ob­ject that can hold even a small amount of stag­nant wa­ter can be a mos­qui­to breed­ing site," the min­istry said.

Say­ing there have been no deaths due to dengue this year, the min­istry said the IVCD is re­spon­si­ble for the man­age­ment of mos­qui­to-borne dis­eases through­out the coun­try.

"There­fore, ve­hi­cles and oth­er re­sources are ro­tat­ed be­tween coun­ties as need­ed to en­sure ef­fec­tive cov­er­age is achieved," the min­istry said.

Last week­end, Wood­land res­i­dents com­plained of mul­ti­ple cas­es of dengue. Pres­i­dent of the South Oropouche River­ine Flood Ac­tion Group Ed­ward Mood­ie, who first raised the is­sue said cas­es were in­creas­ing and claimed there was in­suf­fi­cient spray­ing.

Both the Char­man of the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion and Siparia May­or Dood­nath Mayrhoo al­so claimed that the IVCD was short of chem­i­cals and ve­hi­cles re­sult­ing in the Cor­po­ra­tions' Pub­lic Health De­part­ment pick­ing up the slack to spray af­fect­ed ar­eas.