Bye-bye Aedes..
“Male Wolbachia-carrying mosquitoes will be released at five additional sites to suppress the Aedes mosquito population and mitigate the risk of dengue outbreaks,” announced the National Environment Agency (NEA) on Thursday (Oct 3).
The five new locations are Serangoon Central, Serangoon North, Jurong East, Jurong West, and an expansion of an existing study site in Hougang.
“According to NEA, the sites were selected based on the risk of dengue transmission, including an abundance of Aedes mosquitoes,” NEA said in a statement.
Under Project Wolbachia, male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes that carry the Wolbachia bacteria are released to mate with the female Aedes aegypti in an urban environment. The resulting eggs do not hatch.
“Male mosquitoes do not bite and cannot transmit disease as they feed only on plant juices such as nectar,” NEA explained.
“Releases, which will be conducted twice a week, begin this quarter for the sites in Serangoon and Hougang, while the two remaining sites in Jurong will begin the releases in the first quarter of next year,” NEA added.
“The new sites will increase Wolbachia coverage from 480,000 households to 580,000,” the statement read.
This comes after NEA saw an “80 to 90 per cent drop in the Aedes aegypti mosquito population” in its multi-site field study. The two-year study, which began in July 2022, aims to determine the technology’s impact on dengue cases and clusters on top of its effect on the Aedes population.
“Initial results from the study indicate that residents living in these sites are about 75 per cent less likely to be infected with dengue,” said NEA.
Sustainability and the Environment Minister Grace Fu expressed optimism, highlighting the significant reduction in the average monthly number of dengue cases from 3,000 cases in 2022 to 1,300 this year. However, she emphasized that the project is not a cure-all and stressed the need for residents to adopt good housekeeping practices to minimize mosquito breeding.
“We have to conclude the study so that we can compare the results. So it’s not just about the number of cases, because the number of cases is also dependent on issues such as (the) weather and … whether we have an outbreak,” Minister Fu said.
According to data from the NEA website, more than 12,000 dengue cases have been recorded this year, exceeding the total number recorded in the whole of 2023.
NEA had already warned in March this year of an increase in dengue infections, with over 5,000 cases reported in the first quarter of 2024, more than double the 2,360 cases reported in the same period in 2023.
