Several trucks are to be deployed across the island over the coming weeks to carry out fogging exercises as the Government anticipates an increase in the population of the dengue virus-carrying aedes Aegypti mosquito.

Health and Wellness Minister Dr Christopher Tufton said yesterday that other measures would also be put in place by the authorities to eliminate mosquito breeding sites, even as he called for Jamaicans to monitor and destroy such sites in and around their homes.

“The mosquito still represents a threat to the population because it is the carrier of the dengue virus,” Tufton said while on a tour of the National Entomology Laboratory in Kingston, on Tuesday (July 6).

He noted that the expectation that there will be an increase in the number of mosquitoes around the island was due to the return of the rainy season and the amount of rain that fell over last weekend as a result of the passage of Tropical Storm Elsa.

Tufton, noting that the outbreak of the virus that occurred two years ago killed many Jamaicans and affected thousands of persons, argued that if dengue and COVID-19 had to be confronted at the same time, it would put a “significant” strain on the population.

“I urge the population to be cautious as we go into the next number of months, and to look at the mosquito breeding sites around your homes. Destroy those sites, and be careful as you monitor your environment for the aedes mosquito, and the potential threat of dengue,” he said.

He pointed out that the Mosquito Insectary, which has been set up at the University of the West Indies and at the Entomology Laboratory, under a pilot programme, will help to reduce the breeding of the insects.

“This insectary here, we believe, once we have the final equipment to sterilise the mosquitoes, it will go a far way in helping to control the mosquito population.”

The insectary is breeding those mosquitoes and they will be released into the atmosphere where they will mate and hopefully produce infertile eggs, and literally eliminate a generation.

“This is one way to control the mosquito population,” Tufton said.