A 12-year-old boy from Kalighat, who had tested positive for dengue, died on Thursday. This is the first known case of someone dying from dengue in the city this year, said a civic official.
Biswak Mukherjee, a student of St Helen School off Harish Mukherjee Road, was admitted to Fortis Hospital on Tuesday. He died around noon on Thursday. The death certificate issued by the hospital mentions that the boy passed away “in a case of dengue haemorrhagic fever with shock”.
Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) official said he had a fever for five days when he was admitted to the hospital around 6pm on Tuesday. His blood samples were taken for a test and the result that he had tested positive for dengue arrived on Wednesday evening.
“He was admitted to the hospital on Tuesday and tested positive for NS1 antigen test,” said the KMC official.
There are two diagnostic tests for detecting the presence of the dengue virus, said doctors. The NS1 test is done when the fever is between one and five days old. For longer fevers, there is IgM test.
The KMC official said that the boy’s death was very unfortunate but the number of dengue cases in the city was not alarmingly high.
Kolkata has reported less than 250 cases of dengue since January.
Probir Kumar Mukhopadhyay, the councillor of ward 83 where the boy lived, said one of the problems of the area was that many houses and plots remained locked and the vector control workers could not gain access to the area.
“We will now enter locked campuses if the law permits us and clean the space,” said Mukherjee.
There is a provision in the KMC Act that allows the civic body to impose fines of up to ₹1 lakh on those who do not clear stagnant water.
Chandramouli Bhattacharya, an infectious diseases specialist with the Peerless Hospital, said that fever for a few days now can happen for a number of reasons.
It could be because of any one of the illnesses among Covid, malaria, dengue, scrub typhus or typhoid. “In most people, Covid no longer is exhibiting any particular symptom. So a fever can be a result of either covid or malaria or dengue..,” he said.