Rio de Janeiro State Confirms Third Yellow Fever Case

By Jay Forte, Contributing Reporter

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The State Health Department of Rio de Janeiro confirmed the third yellow fever case in the state this year, all three patients are from Casimiro de Abreu, in the interior of Rio de Janeiro in an area that stretches inland between Buzios and Macaé.

Authorities reported that the patient confirmed with yellow fever, Joaquim de Oliveira Santos, was discharged from the State Institute of Infectology São Sebastião.

Joaquim had been transferred over the weekend from the Angela Maria Simões Municipal Hospital, in Casimiro de Abreu, to the State Institute of Infectology São Sebastião, of the State Servants Hospital (HSE), in the capital of Rio de Janeiro.

The patient is the uncle of Watila Santos, a mason who died of the disease on March 11th. The other victim, Alessandro Valença Couto, 37, was also discharged yesterday.

At the Alberto Torres State Hospital in São Gonçalo, the stepdaughter of Watila, a 9-year-old girl, who has not had her state of health updated by the hospital, is hospitalized. The institution has not confirmed whether this is another case of the disease.

Since cases of yellow fever began to increase in Minas Gerais, concern about the disease and demand for vaccines has grown. The state of Rio has recently announced plans to vaccinate the entire population, over eleven million people.

The last epidemiological bulletin on yellow fever in Minas Gerais counted 206 cases of the disease, in addition to 53 suspected deaths, 23 of which were confirmed by yellow fever.

Throughout 2016, only seven cases of the disease were confirmed in Goiás, São Paulo and Amazonas. Five of them evolved to death, according to the Ministry of Health.

For those traveling to areas at risk of yellow fever, the recommendation is to immunize at least ten days in advance. The most common signs and symptoms of the disease are: high fever, chills, tiredness, headache, muscle pain, nausea and vomiting that last, on average, three days.

In the most severe forms of the disease, jaundice (yellow eyes and skin), hepatic and renal insufficiencies, hemorrhagic manifestations and intense tiredness may occur.

The virus is transmitted by the bite of infected transmitting mosquitoes and there is no direct transmission from an infected person to another person.

The disease has two distinct epidemiological cycles of transmission: wild and urban. In both cases, the virus transmitted is the same, as are the symptoms of the disease. What differs one cycle from the other is the transmitting mosquito.

In the urban cycle, man is the only host with epidemiological importance and transmission occurs by the mosquito Aedes aegypti, common in cities and also transmits dengue, Zika virus and Chikungunya.