Eleven people had died from dengue during the same period last year, around 40 percent less than this year, the bureau said.

Bureau head Nguyen Huy Nga said 85 percent of the cases were in southern provinces and that the D1 dengue virus type could worsen the outbreak.

Tran Ngoc Huu, director of the Ho Chi Minh City Pasteur Institute, said HCMC still topped the list in the number of patients.

The number of dengue fever patients has increased over the past two years, and warmer weather caused by global climate change has also contributed to the rise, he said.

Nguyen Dac Tho, deputy director of the HCMC Center for Preventive Health, said dengue fever has spread to 222 of the total 321 wards and communes in the city.

He said that the disease had struck the city a month earlier than usual, while a shortage of health workers has continued to be a problem and hospitals struggle to cope with dengue patients.

Dr. Tran Tan Hien of the HCMC Hospital for Tropical Diseases said the number of dengue sufferers was stressing hospital services.

Symptoms of dengue fever, a common disease in developing countries, include high fever, skin rashes and severe pain in the head and limbs.

A representative at the conference from the Can Tho Children’s Hospital, which offers treatment to dengue fever patients from Mekong Delta provinces, said they examined more than 80 patients a day in the first five months of this year.

Health authorities in south-central Binh Thuan Province on Monday also reported a drastic increase of dengue fever patients.

Binh Thuan General Hospital said they were treating 374 inpatients, both with dengue fever and viral fever, while the children’s ward has only 120 beds.

Minh, a resident from the province’s Phan Thiet Town, said she had to wait in the corridor with her child who had a severely high temperature.

“I wish he could be treated, it doesn’t matter where we have to stay,” said another woman whose child was suffering, adding that each bed was already occupied by two or three children.

Reported by Quang Minh Nhat