BUENOS AIRES – The Argentine government acknowledged on Friday that the outbreak of dengue affecting the country’s northern provinces is the worst in its history, although it stressed that this is not a nationwide epidemic.

“It’s the worst year,” said the head of epidemiology at the Health Ministry, Juan Carlos Bossio, referring to a disease that up to now has caused the death of three people, two of them in Salta province and another in Chaco.

Two more fatalities, one in Chaco and another in Catamarca, are still under study, although everything indicates that they were victims of this disease.

According to the latest figures from the Health Ministry, there have been 5,830 confirmed cases of dengue, of which three have been of the hemorrhagic variety, while another 194 people are suspected of being infected by the disease.

Unofficially there is talk of 11,000 people infected by the disease, seven times more than in 2004, previously the worst year ever.

In comments to radio stations, Bossio refused to speak of an epidemic and instead talked of an outbreak.

“Strictly speaking this is not a national epidemic. What we have are outbreaks in isolated places around the country,” he said.

He said that “up to now there are five provinces where health authorities have detected an endemic transmission of the dengue virus,” although he said that “in each of them the disease has not spread to the entire district.”

The biggest outbreak of this disease, carried by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, was in 2004, with 1,493 cases in the northern provinces of Salta, Jujuy and Formosa. EFE