And you may have noticed the mosquito fogger trucks roaming your neighborhood. But the weather has significantly impacted the Ministry's spraying schedules across the country. The Chief vector officer says their schedule follows a weekly cycle, where they try to focus on large urban and rural areas, specifically the ones with a history of dengue outbreaks. He says once the weather improves again they will be able to resume normal spraying hours.
Kim Bautista, Chief of Operations, Vector Control Program
"Belize City is divided into nine sanitary zones. And we target those zones, we have three vehicles target those zones. Within a typical day, you can only spray, I believe it is a maximum of four to four and a half hours."
"Because you cannot apply chemicals using that methodology during the day because it will basically evaporate. You cannot apply when it is raining, it will not work. And if you apply after it has rained, it would have to be a minimum of one hour after the rain has passed."
"So you basically have maybe let's say from about 5 a.m. to about six to 6:30 in the morning, and then from about six to about nine o 'clock in the evening. So it's a short window that you have to go and you're actually driving roughly about seven, eight miles per hour to actually do a proper spray."
"So you could imagine that it's a slow process and then the amount of communities that you need to cover. So basically, like the situation improved late last week on Friday, somewhat on Saturday. And then the rain started again yesterday and disrupted schedule because as a ministry, we have given approval for spraying to take place even through the weekends to basically catch up on our schedule, which was previously disrupted by extensive rains."
