Scientists have warned that deadly coronavirus and dengue have overlapping symptoms and this could create trouble for the country’s healthcare infrastructure. Dengue season has started in across large parts of India with the onset of the monsoon and the mosquito-borne disease will make the situation worse for the common man already facing the pandemic.
The impact of a ‘dengue-COVID-19’ season would entail two different diagnostic tests and extract a huge toll on patients too, each disease making the other more complicated to deal with and perhaps more fatal.
According to virologist Shahid Jameel, based on 2016-2019 data India gets about 100,000 to 200,000 confirmed cases of dengue each year.
According to the National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme (NVBDCP), 1,36,422 dengue cases were diagnosed in 2019 and an estimated 132 people died.
“The virus is endemic and present around the year in southern India, and in monsoon and early winter in northern India,” Jameel,CEO at DBT/Wellcome Trust India Alliance, a public charity that invests in building biomedical sciences and health research framework, was quoted as saying by a news agency.
Both COVID-19 and dengue have common symptoms such as high fever, headache and body pain. The dengue season may aggravate the pandemic situation as both viruses may supplement each other, warned Dhrubjyoti Chattopadhyay, virologist and vice chancellor of the Amity University in Kolkata.
“This situation is not yet well studied. But the information available from South America is dangerous and found to create a major challenge to their medical infrastructure,” he said.
“The effect will be very critical. As major symptoms are overlapping, simultaneous infection will be much more fatal. Weakened immune systems will help the other to be more fatal.”
Almost every patient with a three-day fever would need to undergo a test for SARS-CoV-2 the virus and another for dengue which causes COVID-19.
Scientists believe that a careful preparation is needed as very little time has left before a full-blown dengue season starts.
