Jakarta – Indonesia's dengue fever outbreak has killed more than 400 people this year and the number of cases could keep rising, health officials said on Wednesday.

A spokesman for the Health Ministry said the death toll from dengue since the start of the year was 408 people, with 29,643 cases across the archipelago.

Thomas Suroso, director for animal-borne diseases at the Health Ministry, said infections had started to decline in some parts of Indonesia, but Jakarta was still one of a number of trouble spots with growing cases.

"Maybe it will still increase in the next one to two months as the rainy season peaks, then it might start to decline," Suroso said, referring to the number of cases nationally.

Hospitals are full of dengue patients. At one major government hospital in Jakarta on Wednesday, patients in cots lined the hallways because of a lack of space.

Despite the virulence of the outbreak, the World Health Organization has said it was not likely to be the result of a new strain of the virus. It has said the outbreak was probably part of a five-year cycle common in tropical countries.

The Aedes aegypti mosquito, which carries the disease, lives and reproduces around stagnant puddles of water common in inner-city slums during the rainy season from October to April.

The disease strikes annually during the rainy season in Indonesia. But the toll so far in 2004 is more than double that at the same time last year.

There is no vaccine for dengue fever, which causes high fever and hemorrhaging.