Every year on June 15, World Dengue Day focuses global attention on one of the world's fastest-growing public health threats.
Dengue is a debilitating disease that devastates families and communities and overloads health systems. There is no cure, and so prevention and control are essential.
And the numbers demand urgent global attention:
To mark World Dengue Day 2026, Debug opened its Singapore facility for a tour for Tank Talks Asia, a leading podcast covering technology, innovation, and initiatives shaping the region's future.
The Singapore facility is Debug's first international R&D hub. The facility produces more than 10 million male mosquitoes every week. It is where Google's engineering, AI, and robotics capabilities meet world-class mosquito biology, and where the work to protect communities across Southeast Asia and beyond is currently underway.
Yanni Yoong, who runs the Singapore facility, led the Tank Talks Asia hosts Manisha Tank and Andrew Clark on a full tour, walking them through the entire process, from mosquito breeding and sorting to release.
She then sat down with Manisha to share more about the mission and science behind Debug.
Among the highlights were:
Watch the Tank Talk Asia episode to look into our mission, process, and the science and technology behind Debug, as well as the team's pride in helping change the trajectory of this disease.
Author: Monica Tsai
For the past eight years, the Debug team in Singapore has been quietly doing some of the most important work in our global mission: rearing, sorting, and releasing millions of Wolbachia male mosquitoes to suppress the risks of dengue.
On May 12, 2026, we announced the next chapter: the expansion of our Singapore facility into our largest adult mosquito production and R&D hub in the Asia Pacific.
The expansion received strong traction from media publications across Singapore and the ASEAN region, with coverage capturing what this expansion means: not just for Singapore, but for the region and the world.
Among the highlights:
To get up close, the Debug team and I opened the factory doors for a special tour, giving journalists, photographers, and videographers an in-person look at the process of producing 10 million male mosquitoes per week.
Coverage matters because expansion matters.
Asia bears 70% of the global dengue burden. Dengue threatens 4 billion people worldwide, and the tools available to most communities, such as chemical pesticides, larvicides, and fogging, are becoming less effective as mosquitoes develop resistance. Debug's approach is different: non-biting male mosquitoes carrying Wolbachia, a naturally occurring bacterium, are released into targeted areas. When they mate with wild females, the resulting eggs do not hatch. The population declines progressively and measurably, without chemicals, without GMOs.
The expansion builds on that foundation. By anchoring our R&D in Singapore, we are developing next-generation solutions built in Asia and for Asia. Singapore is our blueprint: proving that urban-scale suppression is possible and that the technology can be tailored to local climates, species, and needs.
We are proud of what the Debug Singapore team, including our scientists, engineers, and production and field operations staff, has built here. And grateful, again, to the journalists who took the time to understand the science and tell this important public health story.
Authors: Yanni Yoong (Sr Program Mgr), Monica Tsai (BD)
Debug, a Google initiative, announced the expansion of its research and development (R&D) and mosquito production capabilities in Singapore (media release here). This opening establishes Debug's first international R&D hub and marks the launch of its largest adult mosquito production facility in the Asia Pacific.
This is a significant milestone for Debug and the Asia Pacific region.
Ten years ago, Debug set out to answer the question: how could we stop debilitating mosquito-borne diseases like dengue without chemicals, without GMOs, and without harming the environment?
The answer, it turns out, is good bugs.
Image: Debug Singapore factory.
From Six Million to Ten Million — and Growing
Debug has been supporting the National Environment Agency (NEA) on Project Wolbachia since 2018 and opened its first end-to-end mosquito production facility in 2022. By 2024, Debug released 6 million male Wolbachia mosquitoes per week to suppress the dengue vector population in the community and reduce the risks of dengue among residents. Today, over 10 million are released weekly.
Rigorous and extensive trials by NEA have shown that Project Wolbachia – Singapore has achieved 80-90% suppression of the Aedes aegypti mosquito population and more than 70% reduction in dengue incidents after 6 to 12 months of releases[1].
What This Expansion Makes Possible
The expanded Debug R&D facility and team aren't just about producing more mosquitoes. It's about building smarter, faster, even more precise tools to get this technology accessible to more people.
By scaling our Singapore-based team of scientists, hardware engineers, and software engineers, Debug is accelerating the development of:
While Debug’s current operations primarily focus on mosquito population suppression technology to reduce dengue cases, the expanded facility introduces new R&D capabilities for mosquito population replacement. This approach involves releasing mosquitoes that pass on Wolbachia to the next generation, eventually establishing a mosquito population that is far less capable of transmitting dengue.
The expansion includes a new specialised larval rearing unit designed to develop innovations for replacement programs. This additional offering allows Debug to deliver customised, effective cost-per-person protected targets tailored for countries in Southeast Asia and beyond with larger populations.
Built in Singapore, for the World
Dengue affects 4 billion people globally. Asia bears 70% of that burden.
Choosing Singapore as our first international R&D hub is deliberate. Our Singapore team understands the climate, the markets, and the communities we're working to protect.
The innovations developed here won't stay here, but they'll become the blueprint for scaling customized, cost-effective solutions across Southeast Asia and beyond.
The next generation of Debug technology will be built here, in Singapore, and deployed across the region and around the world. If you want to be part of what comes next, we'd like to hear from you.
Get in touch: partners@debug.comDebug roles: https://goo.gle/debug-sg
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