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Wednesday, August 20, 2025

Workers fear chikungunya may be in T&T

by

20140610

get­ty­im­ages.com

Staff at the In­sect Vec­tor Con­trol Di­vi­sion say they have on­ly start­ed col­lect­ing da­ta on the num­ber of Aedes ae­gyp­ti mos­qui­toes in the coun­try last week and fear T&T may al­ready have cas­es of the chikun­gun­ya virus.

Speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty for fear of be­ing vic­timised, of­fi­cials say on­ly last week be­tween 91 and 111 ovi­t­raps were set up in the Pi­ar­co area.

Ovi­t­raps are used to track the num­ber of Aedes ae­gyp­ti mos­qui­to eggs in a giv­en area so that In­sect Vec­tor would know if there was a rise or fall in the mos­qui­to pop­u­la­tion and if an area need­ed to be sprayed.

Sources say there had been a lack of ovi­t­raps since last No­vem­ber, and that could mean that the virus, which Min­is­ter of Health Dr Fuad Khan said was get­ting clos­er to home, may al­ready be here.

The sources at In­sect Vec­tor said they had been un­able to do any work for the past sev­en months ow­ing to faulty equip­ment at the new head of­fice in Cunu­pia, which they said had been brought to the at­ten­tion of their su­per­vi­sors, but to no avail.

They added that one lab tech­ni­cian, whose re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in­clud­ed re­view­ing the ovi­t­raps, opt­ed to re­turn to the old of­fice in St Joseph and do the nec­es­sary eval­u­a­tion on the traps.


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