Dengue cases in Delhi rise to 56 last week, total 243 cases reported this year
The city had reported 169 cases in 2022, 52 cases in 2021.
The weekly count of dengue cases in the national Capital has doubled over the last week with Delhi reporting 56 new dengue cases ever since, the mosquito borne disease report issued by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) on Monday said.
The city had recorded 24 dengue cases in the preceding weekly cycle.
With the addition of 56 new cases, the overall count of dengue cases reported till July 28 now stands at 243 cases.
The current level of dengue case count is the highest over the last six years.
In comparison to the 243 dengue cases reported between January 1 and July 28, 2023, the city had reported 169 cases in the corresponding period in 2022, 52 cases in 2021, 31 in 2020, 40 cases in 2019 and 56 cases in 2018.
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An MCD official stated that besides parts of city facing flooding and waterlogging over the last month, the rise in cases can also be attributed to it being declared as notifiable disease last year which led to better reporting from healthcare institutes.
The zonal distribution of these 243 cases shows that 129 of these cases have emerged in MCD areas, 17 in NDMC region and 12 cases in Delhi cantonment areas, five under Railways while 80 remained untraced after investigation.
Within the MCD jurisdiction areas, the west zone, South zone and Najafgarh zones have reported maximum cases.
The health department of Delhi government had conducted genome sequencing of the dengue virus and found that 19 out of 20 samples were of type 2 dengue, which is considered more dangerous.
The Delhi government has announced its vector borne disease control action plan for this year which includes deployment of drones for mosquito surveillance and control in vulnerable areas, using existing 1031 helpline number which was used during the COVID pandemic to facilitate dengue treatment and also taking assistance of ASHA workers to raise awareness about dengue prevention.
On Friday, chief minister Arvind Kejriwal reviewed the dengue preparedness in the city.
As part of its efforts to check the spread dengue, the government has increased fines for unchecked mosquito breeding to ₹1000 for households and ₹5000 for commercial establishments.
Meanwhile, the Domestic Breeding Checkers (DBCs)-- who are public health department workers deployed to counter spread of mosquito borne diseases in Delhi have organised a general strike from Monday as consultative talks between the civic body and unions failed to reach a consensus.
DBC union are demanding payment of their pending salaries and regularisation of services as permanent workers of corporation.
Devanand Sharma, who heads the union, said the workers are also facing salary pendency of two to three months.
“The written assurances made after the last strike in March 2022 have not been fulfilled. We are demanding our basic human rights,” Sharma said.
DBCs are deployed by the public health department to detect mosquito breeding sites, use larvicide and fogging for mosquito control along with raising awareness about vector borne diseases.
Dr Sumit Ray, head of the department of critical care medicine and medical director at Holy Family Hospital said the type 2 strain of dengue is dangerous and there is no direct medicine for dengue, so health care workers mostly focus on managing the complications that arise with disease.
“The disease must be controlled at source, breeding of mosquitoes and mosquito bites need to be prevented. Tackling it at source is necessary at this stage”, he said.