With a precedence of last year’s dengue outbreak in the city, the dengue alarm bells are ringing again with the health department finding many places in the city prone to the disease, and detecting presence of larvae at 14 places, including residential as well as institutional.

In a joint search operation for detection of dengue larvae in different areas of the city, a team from Chandigarh accompanied the district health officials here today and visited police residential area, Chander Nagar locality of Haibowal and several locations at Punjab Agricultural University, among others, and found larvae of the dengue mosquito at 14 places.

Larvae of dengue and malaria was also found at four water tanks, two each at PAU and Police lines, the health department said.

Failing to learn lessons from the last year’s near-epidemic scale of the disease which left over 5,000 hospitalized and some 50 dead, residents at Chander Nagar, residential area of Police Lines and PAU, were caught napping as the Health Department found larvae of aedes aegypti in over a dozen coolers.

Dr GP Mangla, district epidemiologist, said larvae were found in two out of the 70 coolers checked at Police Lines, five of the seven coolers at Chander Nagar and five out of 73 coolers checked at different locations at PAU including Clock Tower, PAU Hospital and Thapar Hall.

“The people have not drained out the water from their coolers and this is leading to larvae formation eventually,” Dr Mangla said. He added that two water tanks at PAU and Police Lines each were also detected with presence of larvae.

... contd.