Two dengue patients died in the city on Friday, while the mayor expressed concern over 1,100 fresh dengue cases being reported within a week.
The total number of dengue cases in Calcutta, since January, stood at 2,700 last week and has increased to 3,802 this week, mayor Firhad Hakim said on Friday.
Mosquito-breeding sites were detected at one of Bengal’s premier state-run hospitals, the Calcutta Medical College and Hospital. A vector-control team of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC) that visited the medical college found “four or five” sites of mosquito breeding on the campus. Close to 15,000 people visit the hospital every day.
The dengue virus is spread by Aedes mosquitoes.
Deputy mayor Atin Ghosh, who led the team to the medical college, said they found four or five places where mosquito larvae were present.
“I will not say that the condition on the campus is bad but there are four or five sites of breeding. We will conduct a joint drive and clean these places,” Ghosh said.
A locked ground where discarded materials were stacked could be a potential mosquito-breeding site, a CMC official said. The team could not enter the locked premises on Friday.
An official of the Calcutta Medical College and Hospital said they will clean the ground, where condemned materials have been kept. The official said materials belonging to the hospital that have been damaged or cannot be used any longer have to be disposed of by floating a tender.
“That takes time. We will take corrective measures,” the official said.
Kalpana Dutta, a 78-year-old resident of Regent Estate in Tollygunge, was one of the two dengue patients who died on Friday. She had tested positive for the disease on September 16.
A senior official of the RN Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences (RTIICS), where Dutta died, said the woman had “co-morbidities such as hypertension and seizure disorder”. The official said she was brought to the hospital in a critical condition from another hospital.
The death certificate says the immediate cause of death was “aspiration causing pulmonary cardiac arrest”. Dengue was mentioned as a condition contributing to the death.
At the same hospital, a 66-year-old man suffering from dengue passed away during the day. The official at the hospital said the man, a resident of Salt Lake, suffered from co-morbidities.
The sharp rise in the number of dengue cases is a matter of concern, mayor Firhad Hakim said on Friday.
“The number of dengue cases (in the Calcutta municipal area) till last week was 2,700. The number has risen to 3,820 this week, which means 1,100 fresh cases have been reported in a week’s time,” Hakim said on Friday. “This sharp rise is a matter of concern.”
CMC officials said dengue infections in Calcutta rise sharply in September and October.
A number of dengue deaths have been reported in the city, too. But neither the state health department nor the CMC has disclosed how many lives the disease has claimed.
The state health department does not disclose the total number of dengue infections in the state. The CMC never divulged the figures officially till last week.