BHUBANESWAR: Dengue infection count in the State Capital breached 1,000-mark on Tuesday after detection of 38 new cases in the last 24 hours.
Even as the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) officials claimed that the disease has infected 1,009 persons so far since January 1, the official statistics of the civic body and National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme (NVBDCP) suggest that more than 98 per cent of these cases have been reported in the last 41 days.
According to reports, only three dengue cases were reported in January while two cases had been reported in February this year. Three more cases were also detected in March while another two persons were infected in April. There, however, were no new cases of dengue in the entire Khurda district including Bhubaneswar in the month of May.
In June too, the official number of dengue cases was 2. The disease, however, started spiralling at an alarming rate in the month of July when 551 cases were reported. And in the last 10 days, 446 cases were detected, taking the total number of cases reported in the city in the last 41 days to 997 ( 98.81 per cent).
The number of cases detected in the city this year is more than double than the total number of cases reported in the entire State in the previous year. As per the NVBDCP data, a total 496 dengue cases had been reported in Odisha in 2020.
Although two persons, including a minor, are suspected to have died of the disease this year so far, there has been no official confirmation from BMC. Civic body officials said that they have destroyed over 32,800 breeding sites, including 32,400 sites with larvae, so far to contain spread of the disease. Fogging and anti-larval measures have also been expedited.