Over 1,000 chikungunya cases reported in Delhi last week
As per the data, 1,070 cases of chikungunya were reported from hospitals in the city for the week ending September 24, raising the total number of cases due to the disease to 3,695 this year.
More than 1,000 cases of chikungunya were reported in the national capital last week, data released by municipal corporation of Delhi (MCD) said, revealing a jump of 40% in the total numbers this year.
As per the data, 1,070 cases of chikungunya were reported from hospitals in the city for the week ending September 24, raising the total number of cases due to the disease to 3,695 this year.
The number of chikungunya cases this year is also more than double that of dengue, a disease endemic to Delhi as 1,692 cases were reported this year, with 314 of them coming this week.
Read | Delhi: 33 test positive for scrub typhus, symptoms similar to chikungunya
Dengue affected 5,982 people till September 24, 2015, and almost 16,000 people throughout the year, claiming 60 lives.
This year, till now, the corporations have registered only four deaths due to dengue and none due to chikungunya.
Hospitals in Delhi had earlier reported 15 chikungunya-related deaths, but a death review committee, which reviewed 13 of them, had last week ruled that none of them were due to chikungunya. The committee reserved its opinion on three of the deaths for the want of more document.
“When several conditions have been listed as causes of death, some of which are chronic conditions that the patients have been living with for years, how can the hospitals term it as chikungunya death?” an official of the Delhi health department, who did not want to be named, asked.
The large number of cases, however, prompted the government to classify chikungunya as a notifiable disease.
“In one of the meetings, the corporation brought up the point that they did not have the addresses of nearly 400 chikungunya patients. When a case is reported, it is important to conduct fogging in the house so that the mosquito does not spread the disease to others. This is the reason we have made chikungunya a notifiable disease,” health minister Satyender Jain had said earlier.
Read | Do I have chikungunya? Here’s how to tell whether you need to get tested
