More than 8,000 have been infected, prompting the government to institute COVID-like restrictions
EMILY KWONG, HOST:
An outbreak of chikungunya disease in southern China has sickened over 8,000 people in just a few weeks. As NPR’s Jonathan Lambert reports, health officials there are combating the mosquitoes that spread the disease and implementing some COVID-19-era tactics.
JONATHAN LAMBERT, BYLINE: In the city of Foshan, mosquitoes are public enemy No. 1. Soldiers are fogging the streets with insecticide. Officials are going door to door looking for stagnant water where the bugs can breed, and infected individuals are being forced to isolate themselves. To Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, the moves are…
YANZHONG HUANG: Reminiscent of the COVID-19 tactics.
LAMBERT: Chikungunya is nowhere near as deadly as COVID-19. It’s also not as contagious, since it can only spread through mosquito bites and not directly from person to person. But chikungunya is rare in China, and this outbreak, which began in July, is the biggest in the country’s history and has potential to spread.
HUANG: We have a population with no immunity, and the environment is ideal for mosquito breeding.
LAMBERT: If you get bitten by an infected mosquito, the virus usually starts to cause symptoms within a few days. Fever, bumpy rashes and fatigue are common, but the most notable symptom is joint pain. Laurie Silva is a virologist at the University of Pittsburgh.
LAURIE SILVA: When you have that joint pain, it’s been called debilitating.
LAMBERT: She says people often can’t get out of bed because it hurts too much. That pain is actually the source of chikungunya’s name. It means to bend upwards or to contort in Kimakonde, a language spoken in Tanzania where the virus was first discovered. For many people, the pain that causes such contortions goes away after a week or two.
SILVA: But there’s a large proportion of people – and that ranges from study, but average is about 50% – people then go on to have chronic illness, and that is when they have prolonged joint pain that can last for weeks or months and, in some cases, even years.
LAMBERT: There’s no antiviral treatment for chikungunya and doctors usually prescribe rest, hydration and pain medication. There are two vaccines for the disease, but they’re not widely available. For that reason, mosquito control is really the best prevention, hence, China’s draconian control measures. Still, Huang says that some of those measures are likely overkill.
HUANG: The approach is disproportionate to a vector-borne disease with very low mortality. I think a more targeted and a less coercive approach would prove equally effective.
LAMBERT: So far this year, more than 240,000 cases of chikungunya have been reported worldwide, largely in South America, Africa and parts of Southeast Asia. China’s outbreak is still relatively small, but as climate change makes more places mosquito friendly, scientists think such outbreaks could become more common. Jonathan Lambert, NPR News.
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