Over 400 dengue cases reported in last week of September taking Delhi’s 2022 count to 937

The national capital registered 412 cases of dengue in the last week of September, taking the tally of the mosquito-borne illness to 937 in 2022, the vector borne disease report, released by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) on Monday, showed. No death due to dengue took place this year.

A senior MCD official said the reporting of cases has increased as two portals are now being operated by the state and the central government to register dengue cases. “Last month, we operationalised the second portal and now even small clinics are adding new cases to the tally. It is to be noted that all 412 cases are not from the past one week alone -- many of them are from before but were added to the database only the past week. The situation is not out of control,” the official said, asking not to be named.

A majority of these cases -- 693 of them or 73.9% -- emerged in September, civic officials said, adding that Delhi had last observed such a high number of dengue cases in the month of September five years ago, in 2017.

In comparison to the 937 cases registered till September 28 this year, the city registered 341 cases in the corresponding period in 2021, 266 cases in 2020, 356 cases in 2019, 650 cases in 2018 and 2,152 cases in 2017.

Of the 937 cases, 573 (around 61.1%) came from MCD areas, 22 from New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) area, 33 from Delhi Cantonment and the rest have remained untraced.

The geographical distribution of cases shows that dengue is evenly prevalent across the 12 administrative zones of the MCD with around 40-60 cases in each zone.Only South zone and Najafgarh recorded more than 60 cases.

Besides dengue, the city has registered 125 malaria cases, of which 19 were reported in the past week and 23 chikungunya cases, three of which came in the past week.

The action taken report from the civic body shows that domestic breeding checkers detected 130,544 sites with mosquito larvae in 2022, of which 8,782 mosquito breeding sites were found in the past week. Dengue is caused by the bite of Aedes Agypti mosquito and its larvae breed in clear water in leftover cups, pots, tyres, flowerpots, open utensils, and water coolers, among other items.

Dr SP Byotra, senior consultant at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital and chairman of department of medicine, said, “We are witnessing more cases over the past few weeks. While 90% of patients have symptoms of body pain and fever, we have also seen some serious patients with very low platelet count and dengue shock syndrome. We need to control the vector to control the disease and people should take adequate precautions; they should wear full sleeves and prevent water stagnation on their premises.”

On September 24, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal chaired a review meeting in the wake of rising dengue cases. “We have prepared an action plan (to tackle vector borne diseases) along with health department, MCD, NDMC and other associated departments. We will take several steps in the coming days. Schoolchildren will be involved in spreading awareness to stop the spread of dengue,” the chief minister said.

For public awareness, the Delhi government in 2019 launched the “10 Hafte,10 Baje,10 Minute (10 weeks,10 am, 10 minutes)” campaign through which Kejriwal urged residents to spare 10 minutes at 10 am every Sunday for 10 consecutive weeks to check mosquito breeding in their homes and surroundings to prevent the spread of dengue and chikungunya.