Chikungunya cases in city highest in last 10 years

Vadodara: While the healthcare system may have been busy battling Covid-19 in 2021, it was Chikungunya that spread its tentacles surreptitiously in the city. However, as the disease is not life-threatening or does not cause very serious illness, it went largely ignored despite the highest number of cases being registered in the city since2009.
Last year, according to the Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC) data, the city saw 1,673 chikungunya cases being reported in the calendar year. This was against only 96 cases in 2020. Before the peak in 2021, the highest number of cases registered in the city in a year was in 2018 when 590 cases were detected which is a little higher than one-third of the cases registered last year.
The sudden spike remains a puzzle which could have been caused by multiple factors. Besides an actual rise in the number of cases compared to previous years, another reason experts believe could be better detection and surveillance.
Former head of the department of community medicine at the Baroda Medical college Dr V S Mazumdar said that while there may have been a rise, better detection facilities and availability of diagnostic kits may have led to higher numbers. He added that there is also a possibility that the viral vector-borne diseases may have surfaced due to heightened activities like door-to-door surveys and ‘arogyaraths’ during Covid-19 may have led to testing for other diseases of the patient was not Covid positive.
Mazumdar, however, added that urbanization and construction activities can lead to water accumulation and higher mosquito breeding leading to vector-borne diseases. “I feel that the scale of activities to prevent mosquito breeding has also gone down as compared to the past,” Mazumdar said.
VMC’s medical officer (health) Dr Devesh Patel said that chikungunya and dengue did show spikes in some years. He added that while the reason for this is not known, it could be due to strain of the viruses that were in circulation in a particular season.
Patel said that chikungunya was widely circulating last year. “It is not life threatening,but can trouble people a lot,” he said. Like Mazumdar, he too believed that heightened surveillance and testing could have contributed to the rise last year.