Singapore Is Fighting Dengue Outbreak With Genetically Modified Mosquitoes

Eight months on, COVID-19 continues to spread across the world like wildfire. Among the south-east Asian countries that experienced the havoc wreaked by the novel coronavirus, Singapore was the most stringent with its efforts, pertaining to social distancing and lockdown.

And as the city had barely contained the coronavirus and was unlocking the nation gradually, it has now gotten affected with yet another catastrophe -- Dengue.

Reuters

Reported first by Reuters, the small island of Singapore that is home to 5.7 million people has now registered over 26,000 cases of Dengue in 2020 -- breaking the previous record of 2013 when it registered around 22,000 cases. As of now, twenty people have died because of dengue. Only 27 have died of COVID-19 in Singapore as of now.

What happens during dengue?

Dengue is spread by several species of female mosquitoes of the Aedes genus, principally Aedes aegypti. Dengue can be fatal and cause severe fever that can cause internal bleeding, shock, rashes, vomiting, muscle or joint pain and several other extreme health conditions.

With cases of dengue spreading rapidly, the authorities have introduced a new way to deal with the mosquitoes and take them down once and for all.

The Wolbachia project

In Singapore¡¯s government laboratories, scientists have bred the bacteria-carrying mosquitoes in rows of pallets where they¡¯ve separated the male pupae for release in the worst-hit dengue areas.

These in-bred mosquitoes aren¡¯t like conventional mosquitoes -- they cannot spread malaria or even dengue. These diseases are primarily spread by female mosquitoes and the Wolbachia Project includes all male mosquitoes which are genetically modified.

These mosquitoes, when mate with female mosquitoes (that aren¡¯t genetically modified), they don¡¯t fertilise the eggs, thus preventing them from hatching. Eventually, the female mosquitoes die (they can survive only up to 7 days) and the spreading of the disease is gradually reduced.

Reuters

These mosquitoes are stored in containers where they¡¯re released in a batch of 150. A similar strategy was adopted by researchers in Australia.

While this is a novel way to eliminate mosquitoes, and it has even shown success with 90 percent declines in some areas in Singapore some experts believe that such an application might not be effective in a dense urban region like Singapore.

Paul Tambyah, senior consultant at Singapore`s National University Hospital said, "You`ve got to flood the island with these mosquitoes, and people get annoyed. They're not going to grab the mosquito and examine and see whether it's a male or female. They're going to swipe them away, and that kind of defeats the purpose."