CANBERRA, Nov. 27 (Xinhua) -- South Australians have been warned that the risk of transmission of potentially deadly mosquito-borne diseases in the state is at its highest level in a decade.
According to South Australia (SA) health authorities, conditions in the upcoming summer are shaping up to be similar to those in that of 2010/11 when the deadly Murray Valley Encephalitis virus was last detected in humans and high numbers of the endemic Ross River virus were reported.
Andrew Vickers, SA Health's manager of health protection programs, said that with La Nina conditions set to remain until at least February the only way for South Australians to guarantee their safety was to prevent mosquito bites.
"(The current forecast is) a little bit weaker than those conditions in 2010," he said.
"This season we need to give people information on how they can protect themselves from getting bitten (because) there are no vaccines or cures for the viruses we get through mosquitoes in SA.
"The only way to prevent getting infected is to prevent getting bitten."
SA Health has an existing control plan that assesses the risk for a season based on the weather forecast and data from mesquite surveillance programs from stage one, which is standard risk, to stage three when there is a high risk of viruses being transmitted to humans.
Vickers said that the 2020/21 season started at stage two but that it could be raised to stage three if a human contracted a mosquito-borne disease.
"Mosquito bites are more than a nuisance, they can give you diseases and those diseases can be nasty and prolonged or potentially fatal," he said.
"So preventing breeding of mosquitoes locally, wearing the appropriate clothes, avoiding going into mosquito-prone areas at dawn and dusk and using the repellents that are known to work." Enditem
