Singapore could become the first dengue-free country in the tropics, according to Alphabet’s life sciences unit Verily — if the government decides to use its technology across the city state to tackle the mosquito-borne disease.
Dengue claims 300mn victims each year, with 90mn serious cases and tens of thousands of deaths, the majority being children. In Singapore, cases have surged this year, with the average weekly number as of early December being 20 per cent higher than normal, according to the National Environment Agency.
But in some residential neighbourhoods where the NEA and Verily have run field trials, it is a different story. Verily’s tech fights dengue-carrying Aedes aegypti mosquitoes with the release of other facility-bred Wolbachia-Aedes mosquitoes. The NEA has reported up to 98 per cent suppression of the Aedes aegypti population and an 88 per cent reduction in dengue cases after at least one year of releases under Project Wolbachia, which Verily joined in 2018.