Sri Lanka has confirmed an epidemic of the mosquito-borne Chikungunya viral fever, a top health official said on Saturday. Doctors suspect it has infected 5,000 people in the island’s far north.
Dr. Nihal Abeysinghe, director of the state Epidemiology Department, said pockets of the fever had been detected in Sri Lanka’s northwest, south and east, but could not say how many cases had been reported.
“We have got some samples down to Colombo and we handed them over to five different laboratories. All five have reported it as Chikungunya,” Abeysinghe said. “You could say it is (an epidemic).”
“We have confirmed there is an outbreak going on in Kalmunai, Mannar, Batticaloa, Puttalam and some parts of Colombo city,” he added. “It is in densely populated pockets.”
Abeysinghe said he believed up to 60 percent of reported fever cases were due to Chikungunya.