Cuba is battling a wave of mosquito-borne illnesses, with the country’s top epidemiologist warning that nearly one-third of the population has been impacted, with large numbers of workers taken ill.

On Thursday, fumigators armed with fogging machines probed alleys and crowded buildings in parts of the capital Havana, among the hardest hit by mosquito-borne viruses including dengue and chikungunya, authorities said.

It comes after Francisco Duran, the national director of epidemiology at the Cuban Ministry of Public Health, described the situation in the Caribbean island nation as “acute”.

“We are working intensely, as we did with COVID-19,” Duran said, referring to ongoing research projects to find medications and vaccines to help tame the virus’s impacts.

Dengue fever has long plagued

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