Sri Lanka registered more than 76,000 dengue cases in 2022, according to official data…..reports Asian Lite News
Nearly 25 per cent of Sri Lanka’s dengue patients are school children, a health official said.
Nalin Ariyaratne, the director of the National Dengue Control Unit, said on Sunday that there are more than 42,000 dengue cases reported so far this year in Sri Lanka.
Addressing the media a day before Sri Lankan schools open for a new academic term, he added the spread of dengue at the school level must be minimised, Xinhua news agency reported.
He said around 50 per cent of cases have been reported from the Western province, the most populous area in Sri Lanka and epidemiologists worry that 2023 will see a large dengue outbreak.
Sri Lanka registered more than 76,000 dengue cases in 2022, according to official data.
Sri Lanka tourism
Sri Lanka’s estimated tourism revenue in May saw a remarkable growth of over 200 per cent year-on-year, reaching $131.5 million, according to the latest data from the country’s central bank.
This impressive increase occurred despite the fact that May is considered an off-peak month for tourist arrivals, Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA) Chairman Priantha Fernando told the media on Saturday.
The estimated revenue from tourism in May 2022 was $43.5 million, data showed.
For the first five months of 2023, the tourism revenue totaled $827.8 million, marking a substantial increase of 30.4 per cent compared to the same period of last year when it stood at $634.6 million, according to the official data.
Data also showed 524,486 foreign visitors arrived in Sri Lanka in the first five months of this year, surpassing 378,521 arrivals recorded a year earlier, Xinhua news agency reported.
Tourism, one of Sri Lanka’s leading foreign exchange earners, suffered a setback due to the Covid-19 pandemic and economic and political crises in the South Asian country.