A SAMOAN family has lost a second child to dengue fever in a matter of days.
The two-year-old boy died just days after his nine-year-old brother, taking the dengue death toll to five.
The government has extended an earlier one-week closure of schools by a week to address the rise in cases.
Dengue cases in the Pacific have reached their highest level in almost a decade, with many cases also in American Samoa, Cook Islands, French Polynesia, Kiribati, Nauru, Tonga, and Tuvalu.
The situation has led Health NZ to warn travellers to the Pacific to take precautions.
In the first seven months of 2025, there have been 103 cases of dengue recorded in Auckland, double the amount recorded for all of 2024.