The civic body has identified seven wards as dengue-vulnerable based on the number of cases reported since January, an official of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) said.
The wards include neighbourhoods such as Sunny Park and Queens Park in Ballygunge, along with parts of Lake Gardens, Topsia, Picnic Garden, Kidderpore, Jodhpur Park, and Bhowanipore.
Two men have died of dengue in the Calcutta municipal area this month. Swaroop Mukerji, 75, a resident of Sunny Park in Ballygunge, died on August 9 after a brief bout of fever. Arijit Das, 35, from Gabtala Lane in Behala Parnasree, died of dengue on Thursday. Earlier, on June 21, 13-year-old Saroni Banerjee, a resident of Dum Dum Cantonment under the Dum Dum Municipality, had also died of dengue.
KMC officials said the seven wards tagged as vulnerable — 66, 67, 69, 70, 77, 93 and 108 — have recorded multiple cases within small localities, indicating the presence of active mosquito breeding sites.
“When several cases are reported from a small area, there is a strong possibility that mosquito-breeding sites exist nearby,” said a KMC official.
Vector control teams have been deployed to these neighbourhoods and are conducting visits every two to three days to eliminate potential breeding grounds and curb the spread of the disease, the official said.
A resident of Sunny Park said that several people in the area have tested positive for dengue over the past two weeks. He also pointed to the presence of numerous under-construction buildings, where stagnant water collects and is left unattended.
Since January, 290 dengue cases have been reported in the Calcutta municipal area. In the Bidhannagar municipal area, 91 cases have been recorded, while Howrah reported 140 cases, and New Town 11 cases.
In Bidhannagar, wards 12 and 13 — covering parts of Rajarhat — have seen a notable number of infections, said Banibrata Banerjee, the mayoral council member in charge of health.
Bidhannagar mayor Krishna Chakraborty raised the issue of illegal waste dumping in vacant plots in Salt Lake. “Some residents, along with owners of guest houses, hotels, and restaurants, are dumping waste in these vacant plots,” Chakraborty said.
An entomologist warned that discarded containers of any shape can become breeding grounds for Aedes aegypti, the mosquito species responsible for spreading the dengue virus.
In Howrah, the civic body is distributing cloth covers and mosquito nets in slums to keep containers covered and prevent mosquito breeding, an official of the municipal corporation said.
Soumitra Ghosh, head of general medicine at Medical College Kolkata, said most fever cases are still testing as viral infections. “But we must not miss a single case of dengue or malaria,” he said. “I recommend dengue tests for patients who don’t show signs of upper respiratory infection but have chills, body pain, and fever lasting more than two days.”