RIO DE JANEIRO, July 26. /TASS/. Two female residents of Brazil have become the world's first people to die from Oropouche fever, the republic's Health Ministry said.

The two women, from the Bahia state in the east of the country, were both under 30. The symptoms of the disease resemble a severe form of dengue fever.

According to the agency, more than 7,000 cases of the virus have been reported in 2024 in 20 Brazilian states. There were no previous reports of fatalities from this fever in the scientific literature.

The Oropouche virus was identified in 1955 in a village of the same name in Trinidad and Tobago, an island nation in the southern Caribbean. The disease is spread through the bites of small flies and mosquitoes.