Nagpur Municipal Corporation asks private hospitals to confirm dengue after ELISA

NAGPUR: After many private practitioners and hospitals declared several patients to be suffering from dengue, municipal commissioner Radhakrishnan B has urged them to forward samples of all such patients for confirmatory ELISA tests.
Officially, the number of dengue cases has not increased but doctors are observing an upward trend based on NS-1 card test.
“This year, two malaria and 57 dengue cases have been detected till October 7. These are pretty low numbers as compared to last year. We are continuing with surveillance of mosquito-breeding sites. I request people to immediately visit hospital if they have symptoms.
Private hospitals are conducting preliminary investigation of dengue and malaria. As per protocol, I request private hospitals to forward the samples to NMC malaria and filaria department for confirmatory tests,” Radhakrishnan said. The civic chief warned citizens against lowering guard and continue to maintain cleanliness in the vicinity.
Infectious diseases specialist Dr Nitin Shinde said, “Dengue ELISA result takes two days, which leads to unnecessary use of antibiotics and other treatment. Dengue card test can be false positive which may inflate the number of cases. But rapid dengue test is cheap and reasonably accurate with sensitivity of around 77% and specificity of around 86%. These are extremely useful for diagnosis within time.”
Internal medicine specialist Dr Mohan Nerker said we don’t prescribe ELISA because of its high cost. “As patients don’t need admission, we prefer NS-1 card test. Ideally, ELISA must be preferred but that may add unnecessary financial burden on the patient. Our patients recover within two or three days,” he said.
Dr Nerker added that severity of the disease is not as high as it was in the last few years. “Earlier, we saw patients coming with dengue-shock syndrome, dengue haemorrhagic fever. Only one among 10 needs platelets,” he said.
Internal medicine expert Dr Vaibhav Agrawal said there is no doubt dengue cases are increasing in the city. “I feel, post Covid dengue is more severe. A couple of patients were admitted this week. As temperature rises, dengue cases will rise further. We have been compulsorily doing ELISA test only,” he said.