Dengue claims 112 lives, Chikungunya shows declining trend

New Delhi, Oct 19 (UNI) Dengue has claimed 112 lives while about 6740 people are infected while Chikungunya has shown a declining trend in the country.

In Delhi, NCR and neighbouring states, 1820 cases of dengue have been reported with 33 deaths of which two have occurred during the past 24 hours. Out of these, 1144 cases have been reported from Delhi, while 676 cases from the NCR and other states. These include 207 cases from Haryana, 362 cases from Uttar Pradesh, 16 cases from Rajasthan and 91 from others.

Apart from Delhi, the maximum number of dengue cases have been reported from Kerala (834), followed by Rajasthan (830), Gujarat (449), West Bengal (573),Uttar Pradesh (478),Tamil Nadu (307), Punjab (413), Maharashtra (580), Haryana (232), Karnataka (92) and Andhra Pradesh (57).

Though during the past 24 hours only 317 dengue cases have been reported in the country, the trend of the disease could be known only after four-five days Dr PL Joshi of the National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme said. The disease could only come down if the vector was controlled by concerted efforts of civic agencies and public at large.

However, today's rainfall and decline in temperature could not control mosquito breeding as the vector grows in temperature upto 16 degrees celsius. Moreover, the noise and pollution on Diwali would also not have any adverse impact on mosquito breeding.

Meanwhile, the number of suspected Chikungunya cases during the past 24 hours were just 525 while earlier it used to be in thousands. The extent of the disease has also come down to just 12 districts showing its declining trend, according to Dr Joshi. The total number of confirmed Chikungunya cases were 1653 of which 28 were from Delhi and NCR.

The maximum number of confirmed Chikungunya cases have been reported from Maharashtra (679) followed by Karnataka (294), Andhra Pradesh (248), Gujarat (160), Tamil Nadu (111), Madhya Pradesh (62), Kerala (38), Rajasthan (24) and Pondicherry (9).

The expert panel which visited Kerala has said that Chikungunya was not the cause of deaths in states and the lives were lost due to other diseases from which Chikungunya patients were infected.

The panel, which consisted of experts from World Health Organisation, National Institute of Communicable Diseases and National Institute of Virology, conducted verbal autopsy and reaffirmed that chikungunya was not a fatal disease and all the deaths attributed to it in Kerala were due to secondary infections as the people who died were old persons with various ailments like cancer, heart disease etc, Dr Joshi said.

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