No fresh spike in dengue, chikungunya cases in Delhi

New cases of dengue and chikungunya over the past week are almost the same as the week before, shows weekly data released by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) on Monday.

In the week ending on October 22, 724 new cases of chikungunya were reported in Delhi and NCR, similar to the 713 reported the week before. The corporations also reported 324 dengue cases in the same period, as compared to 296 cases the week before.

The new cases took the total number to 8,149 confirmed cases of chikungunya and 3,333 of dengue. The corporations reported four deaths due to dengue and none related to chikungunya so far.

“Now, we hardly see any dengue or chikungunya patients. I treat around 30-35 people in the out-patient department daily and I get to see a dengue patient once in two days and a chikungunya case once in five to seven days,” said Dr Suranjit Chatterjee, senior consultant of internal medicine at Indraprastha Apollo.

Since September middle, more people are being diagnosed with dengue than chikungunya, which caused an outbreak in Delhi and neighbouring states this year.

“I haven’t seen a single chikungunya patient for the last three weeks, but one or two dengue patients come to the OPD daily. I cannot pin-point a reason because both diseases are spread by the same mosquito,” said Dr Rommel Tikoo, senior consultant of internal medicine at Max Super-speciality hospital, Saket .

Both mosquito-borne diseases peaked earlier than usual this year. “Usually, dengue cases peak during October and go down in November, but this year, we saw a decline in the numbers earlier than usual, in the beginning of October itself,” said a Delhi government health official.

This time last year, the numbers of dengue cases were peaking during the same period, with 1,715 cases reported during a week. “This year, the rains stopped abruptly, which led to shrinking of breeding grounds for mosquitoes. This coupled with intensive mosquito breeding-control measures and fogging conducted by the corporations and the Delhi government brought an early end to the diseases,” said a municipal health official.