The Secretary of State for Health of Minas Gerais, Fábio Baccheretti, said that the preparation to combat arboviruses in the state is always thinking about a difficult year, such as 2024, when Minas faced a dengue epidemic never seen before.
“We had the worst year in our history in 2024”, he recalled. However, according to him, based on the 2025 scenario, there should not be a strong wave of cases this year.
“The drones are working, the preparation of the municipalities too. But we will always look at it as a difficult year. We have three serotypes of dengue circulating this year: 1, 2 and 3. We know that when there are many serotypes circulating, the chance of a person who has never had that serotype getting it is high. And what’s worse, if in the space of less than two years, they get a different serotype than the one they had, the chance of severe dengue fever increases. Therefore, our preparedness perspective will always be to face a year difficult,” he said.
Baccheretti also detailed actions to prevent, combat and control dengue and other arboviruses in the state. The secretary highlighted the significant drop in cases in 2025. In Minas, 118,858 probable cases of the disease were registered, a reduction of 92% compared to 2024. In the same period, 17,803 confirmed cases of chikungunya and 26 of zika were recorded.
To combat arboviruses this season, the state government allocated around R$210 million. Of this total, R$23.6 million was invested in emergency actions and R$35.1 million was transferred to intermunicipal consortia to control the Aedes aegypti mosquito. According to the State Department of Health (SES-MG), another R$47.3 million is planned for strengthening surveillance teams, decentralizing tobacco, implementing the provision of tests and incorporating technologies such as the use of drones to monitor difficult-to-access areas and ovitraps – traps used to capture and monitor mosquitoes.
Vaccination
Baccheretti recalls that a small portion of the population was vaccinated against the disease, due to the number of vaccines available, but the tendency is for this situation to change next year. “We are optimistic for this year, especially for us to have 20 million doses of the Butantan vaccine available by the end of the year, which is a single dose. Next year, we will certainly be talking about another scenario, with a large part of the population vaccinated.”
The secretary also emphasizes that the Butantan vaccine is 100% effective in cases of hospitalization. “I dare say that this will be the last year with a large part of the population unvaccinated. Next year we will be better in this regard. But, we cannot rest assured that this year we will have few cases of dengue.”
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Nova Lima, in Greater BH, will be one of the first three cities Brazilian women receiving Butantan-DV, the first single-dose dengue vaccine in the world and completely national. According to the Ministry of Health, immunization will begin in the municipality on January 17th.
