BRASILIA, Jan. 23 (Xinhua) -- Authorities in central Brazilian state Goias confirmed on Wednesday that a December death there was from yellow fever, raising the total number of confirmed fever deaths to nine in the last 30 days.

    Cairo de Freitas, head of Goais's health department, said the man, a guard at the Federal University of Goias, had died on Dec. 30 but tests results had only become available on Wednesday.

    Most of the 35 people infected by the mosquito-borne disease were in Goias, the state that surrounds national capital Brasilia. Last month's death toll is now nearly double the five fatal cases seen in a similar outbreak a year earlier.

    Also on Wednesday Brazil's central government repeated a public call not to panic, saying that the nation does faces neither an outbreak nor an epidemic.

    However, numbers seeking a yellow fever vaccine have soared throughout the region and last week 31 people were hospitalized with symptoms of overdosing on their daily or weekly vaccine doses.

    The central government's Health Ministry has called on people living in high-risk areas to vaccinate themselves.

    In Brasilia, around 100 soldiers and close to 1,000 state health workers have begun a campaign targeting the Aedes Aegypti mosquito, which is the only mosquito species that spreads dengue fever as well as being one of three mosquitoes species that carry yellow fever.