Dengue fever outbreak in Argentina leads to shortage of a must-have item: mosquito repellent
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Shelves have gone empty, as residents hunt in vain and resort to DIY alternatives. And surging resale prices are shocking even to Argentines accustomed to triple-digit inflation. The country’s latest crisis: There isn’t enough mosquito repellent.
As the South American country contends with its worst outbreak of dengue fever in recent memory, bug spray has become this season’s hot-ticket item. So hot that it’s sold out in virtually all Buenos Aires stores and going for exorbitant prices online, in some cases as much as 10 times the retail value.
“We’ve been to at least 30 pharmacies all over the city and there is nothing left,” Ana Infante said as she swatted mosquitoes away from her two small daughters, their arms visibly pocked with red bumps. Infante, 42, joined the frenzied race for repellent when her co-worker at an empanada shop fell seriously ill with dengue last week. “All we have is this,” she said, raising her swatting hand.
Rampant hoarding and surging prices have stoked desperation. In one widely shared video from a market in the town of El Talar outside the capital Thursday, shoppers are seen descending on an employee opening new boxes of bug spray, snatching up stock before he could place a single bottle on a shelf.
“I feel helpless, because I know I can’t do anything,” said Marta Velarde, a 65-year-old shop owner in Buenos Aires, recalling how a distraught customer recently threatened to punch her in the face when she broke the news she had no repellent left. “You have no explanation and people are very aggressive.”
As public outrage mounted and the repellent shortage evolved from nuisance to national news, the government — busy battling sky-high inflation and near-daily protests — was forced to intervene. On Thursday, authorities lifted import restrictions on foreign-made mosquito repellents to boost supply and announced they would ramp up production at local labs.
“We spoke with producers who told us that they have changed their capacity to produce, they are doing it at their maximum capacity,” Health Minister Mario Russo told the local Telefé channel Thursday in his first TV appearance since the dengue outbreak.
When asked how Argentines should protect themselves in the meantime, he offered a warning that was instantly mocked on social media:
“Be careful with shorts,” he said.
The dengue virus has exploded across Latin America over the past muggy weeks of summer in the Southern Hemisphere.
The mosquito-borne illness has long been endemic in countries like Brazil and Colombia, but experts warn the worsening outbreak in Argentina means the Aedes aegypti mosquito has widened its range.
