Acting against the dengue menace has become more urgent, as Singapore?s dengue cases have crossed into the "warning level", with 259 cases recorded last week. The number of homes found breeding mosquitoes was up 53 per cent from last year.

According to The Health Ministry, a band of 256 to 378 cases a week warrnats an orange alert, equivalent to a warning signal, while epidemic levels are reached when more than 378 cases occur in a week.

This has experts, including Dr Ooi Peng Lim, deputy director of disease control at the Health Ministry's communicable diseases division, worried that a dengue epidemic is on its way.

A total of 14,209 dengue cases were reported in 2005, which was recorded as the worst dengue epidemic here, The Straits Times reported today. At that time, the number of cases hovered above 700 for three weeks, peaking at 713. The worst week last year clocked a mere 104 cases.

The tally so far this year is 1,954 cases, fuelled by the hot weather and a change in the dominant dengue type. Den-2 is steadily becoming the dominant strain this year - a switch from Den-1, the dominant type for the past few years.

Checks by National Environment Agency (NEA) revealed that breeding locations for the disease-carrying Aedes mosquito continue to be uncovered in homes. Up to the middle of this month, a total of 1,416 homes were found breeding mosquitoes, compared to 927 last year - a whopping 53 per cent increase.

Notably, 84.9 per cent of hot spots were found indoors.

Dr Ooi said: 'Steps (by the task force) will fail, unless the public takes other steps to match our efforts.'

Over in Malaysia, The Straits Times reported that dengue cases there rose by over 50 per cent between January and last week compared with the same period last year.

A total of 20,658 cases were recorded for the first 21 weeks of this year, up from 13,313 for the corresponding period last year. Selangor, the Federal Territory and Johor continue to top the charts for the number of dengue hot spots.

For the full report, read The Straits Times today.