Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

On the morning of January 10, Beijing time, it was reported that Verily, the life sciences division of Google's parent company Alphabet, said that Singapore could become the first country in the tropics free of dengue fever, provided the government decided to use Verily technology throughout the country to deal with the mosquito-borne disease.

Dengue fever causes 300 million victims each year, of which 90 million are seriously ill and tens of thousands die, most of them children. In Singapore, the number of cases surged last year, with an average of 20% more cases per week than normal as of early December, according to the National Environment Agency.

But in some residential areas where Singapore's National Energy Administration and Verily are conducting field trials, the situation is different. Verily's technology fights mosquitoes that carry dengue fever by releasing Wolbachia, an Aedes aegypti mosquito bred at other facilities. The National Energy Administration reported that after at least one year of release, the population inhibition rate of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes was as high as 98%, and the number of dengue cases decreased by 88% in 2018. Perry Verily joined the program.

"We can make Singapore the first tropical country without dengue fever," said Linus Upson, who leads Verily's Debug project in California. "We are ensuring the scientific and economic viability of this proposal and will make recommendations to the Singapore government in the coming months."

Similar programs to disinfect insects have been around for decades, and Verily has tested the technology in other places, such as California, but Singapore, where mosquito density is high, is seen by the company as a particularly good opportunity to test its effectiveness across the country.

Some companies may eventually become customers of the technology, such as resorts and hotels in the hot tropics. But the technology has also raised some concerns, such as the environmental impact it still brings, because insects are pollinators that affect plant growth. Some people also think that whether other governments in Southeast Asia have the ability to copy Singapore's projects, because the level of economic development of other Southeast Asian countries is far lower than that of Singapore.

Aedes aegypti is the main vector that promotes the spread of dengue fever in Singapore. It can also carry yellow fever, chikungunya and Zika viruses.

The key to eradicating it is to use Wolbachia, a common bacteria naturally present in 50% of insect species, to inhibit it. Verily's highly automated facilities in Singapore and teams of scientists, engineers and experts raise mosquitoes, classify them by sex, and then release males to mate with wild females. Verily's male mosquitoes have Wolbachia, while wild Aedes aegypti females do not, making them incompatible. The end result is that female Aedes mosquitoes lay eggs after mating, but they do not hatch.

A science professor from Singapore said: "the concept is quite interesting because they are increasing the overall mosquito population and then reducing the mosquito population. This approach works here and elsewhere, although we need to figure out whether the overall benefits are worth the environmental impact and cost." The professor spoke on the condition of anonymity because it was a government project.

Other projects that do not focus on repression have also been successful. The World Mosquito Program (World Mosquito Program) works in 12 countries from Australia to Brazil and Fiji, raising and releasing mosquitoes infected with Warbach bacteria every week for up to 20 weeks. After a year, wild populations in the target area will be infected, and these bacteria can prevent the replication of viruses, including dengue fever.

"We immunized them effectively," said Cameron Simmons, global executive director of the World mosquito Program and director of the Institute of Vector Diseases at Monash University. He said that this approach does not need to be repeated and does not require huge investment in industrial and automation facilities.

Trials conducted by the World Mosquito Project in the Yogyakarta Special District (Yogyakarta) of Indonesia showed that compared with untreated areas, the number of dengue cases in areas treated with Wolbachia decreased by 77 per cent and the number of dengue hospitalizations decreased by 86 per cent.

"High-income countries, such as Singapore or US states, can afford the male mosquito method used by Verily," Simmons said. But there are much more mosquitoes and humans in cities such as Jakarta, Bangkok or Ho Chi Minh, which makes it more difficult and expensive. This technology has not been verified on a large scale. We didn't solve the problem of people being bitten. Mosquitoes still exist, but we are solving health problems. "

Proponents argue that in the long run, inhibition technology is still cheaper than public health. A study by the National Energy Administration puts the economic impact of dengue fever at between $1 billion and $2.2 billion between 2010 and 2020.

Uppsen agrees that any intervention will have an impact on the environment, but he says the problem of invasive species such as Aedes aegypti, which is not indigenous to Southeast Asia, has become increasingly serious for the government and health systems. He believes that the cost of Verily's project in Singapore "will be lower than the direct medical cost of dengue fever."

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