A Calcutta Municipal Corporation official died of dengue at a private hospital in the city on Friday. His father is undergoing treatment for the vector-borne disease in the same hospital.

Khardah residents Shantanu Majumder, 56, and his father Ashit Kumar Majumder, 83, were admitted to Ruby General Hospital late on Wednesday.

Shantanu, the zonal manager-1 in the social welfare and urban poverty alleviation department of the corporation, died after a severe drop in the platelet count and multi-organ failure, doctors said.

Ashit, a retired central government employee, has shown some improvement but doctors are worried how he would react to the news of his son’s death.

About 1,500 dengue cases have been reported in the Calcutta municipal area this year, nearly half of them in the past couple of months, a civic official said. The disease has claimed five lives in the Calcutta municipal area this year.

Shantanu and his father had both been running a temperature since Friday night.

“Both father and son underwent blood tests twice and the reports showed a drop in the platelet count,” a corporation employee and a friend of Shantanu said.

Shantanu’s son, Subhrangshu, said the family had initially thought of admitting the two to RG Kar hospital but decided against it because they found the wards “unclean”.

“We feared that my grandfather could acquire a hospital-borne infection there. So we admitted them to a private hospital instead,” Subhrangshu, a law graduate, said.

Shantanu did not have fever at the time of admission, doctors at the Bypass hospital said. The family members informed the hospital that Shantanu’s platelet count had dropped to 45,000 and his father’s to around 1 lakh. The normal platelet count is between 1.5 lakh and 4 lakh per micro litre of blood.

“We conducted the necessary tests and the reports received early on Thursday revealed that both of them were suffering from dengue. Treatment was started immediately but Shantanu went into septic shock and developed multi-organ failure,” a doctor said.

Subhranshu alleged delay in blood transfusion even after his father’s platelet count had dropped to less than 20,000. “We were told by the hospital authorities around 10am on Thursday that blood would be arranged by 1pm. But it was 3pm by the time the blood was procured,” he said.

The hospital authorities, however, denied the allegation.

The Majumders also alleged that Khardah Municipality had not taken steps to check dengue but the civic body refuted the charge. “We carry out regular cleanliness drives,” said Taposh Paul, the chairman of the municipality.