Four new cases of dengue have been reported by Health Department of Dehradun and importantly, all these patients are from Chauda Bigha locality of Tehri district.  The district vector-borne diseases officer Subhash Joshi said on Friday that blood samples of four patients have been found positive in the Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay ( ELISA) test on the day in Dehradun. He admitted that many cases of the disease are being reported from Chauda Bigha locality. Incidentally Chauda Bigha is an urban area which falls within the extended areas of Rishikesh town. However, officially, it is located in Tehri district. The lone case of death of dengue in the state is also from this area.

Joshi said that though Chauda Bigha area falls in Tehri district the teams of the health department from Dehradun are visiting the place and doing door to door survey for suspected cases.

The experts opine that a large number of patients from a small locality being afflicted by the dreaded vector-borne disease indicates the fact that the virus is very active in the area.

Joshi claimed that extensive fogging is being done in the area to effectively check the population of mosquitoes.

Dengue is a viral infection spread by the mosquito Aedes Aezypti popularly known as Tiger Mosquito.

The symptoms of the disease are persistent high fever, rashes, headache and pain in the joints. In the acute cases, the platelets number dwindles drastically which may prove fatal for the patient.  In Uttarakhand, the disease is more prevalent in Dehradun, Haridwar and Udham Singh Nagar districts.

In 2017, a total of 198 cases of the disease were reported from Dehradun district while in 2016, the figure was 1428 as that year it assumed epidemic proportions.    This year, the district health department has reported 18 cases of the disease so far out of which one patient has died.