Skin allergies, stomach infections, viral illnesses, and various types of fevers have led to long lines at hospitals, with patients crowding the OPDs of hospitals in Delhi-NCR with the unusually heavy rains. Both adults and children are now filling hospital outpatient departments.
This surge in waterborne and vector-borne illnesses has led to increased hospitalisations, with significant spikes in typhoid, jaundice, hepatitis A and E as well as acute gastroenteritis. However, patients have been typically showing improvement within two to three days of starting treatment.
Doctors have started seeing an increase in cases starting from July, which coincides with the beginning of the monsoon season but it has accelerated in August. They expect that this trend may continue until September.
According to Dr Pankaj Verma, senior consultant of internal medicine at Gurugram-based Narayana Hospital, “We have been witnessing a spike in cases of gastroenteritis, skin infections, and viral fevers in our OPD. On average, we treat nearly 50-70 patients weekly suffering from these conditions.”
The majority of these patients suffer from viral infections followed by gastroenteritis which includes vomiting and diarrhea. Skin infections, like fungal infections and dermatitis, are also common due to increased humidity.
“We are seeing several cases of dengue and typhoid this season,” Verma said while explaining the top symptoms of viral fevers doing the rounds which included high fever, chills, body aches, and fatigue.
For children, according to Dr Maninder Dhaliwal, an expert in paediatric pulmonology, viral upper respiratory infection and viral diarrhoea are common. “Typhoid is the same as in every monsoon and in fact, cases of hepatitis A and hepatitis E are also not uncommon.”
Hepatitis A and E are typically caused by consumption of contaminated food or water and it causes swelling in the liver.
Dhaliwal, senior consultant at Faridabad-based Amrita Hospital, noted that “dengue cases have just started coming in among children.”
Increased cases of swine flu
“Every year in August and September we have a 10 to 20 per cent increased footfalls in the OPD and IPD admissions due to increased incidence of fever, related to viral infections, dengue and other virals,” Dr Sumit Ray, medical director at Holy Family Hospital while adding that this season, H1N1 or swine flu is slightly more pronounced.
A similar observation was made by Dr Yatin Mehta, chairman, critical care, at Gurugram-based super speciality hospital Medanta who is presently treating five patients in his hospital’s intensive care unit (ICU).
Overlapping symptoms of dengue, chikungunya & Zika
Infact, Dr Jatin Ahuja, senior consultant, Infectious Disease, Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals, New Delhi told News18 that he keeps on diagnosing ‘coronavirus family strain’ in the PCR tests recommended to patients.
“There are several viruses doing the rounds including flu virus, respiratory virus, influenza B and influenza B. Zika, malaria and chikungunya is also infecting people,” Dr Ahuja said.
He said that symptoms of dengue, and chikungunya are sometimes overlapping such as the appearance of rashes. In some cases, symptoms of Zika also confuse with chikungunya with pain in joints and fever. However, in case of typhoid, fever starts mildly and hovers around 99 degrees for one or two days.
He suggested that people should start testing early. “The idea is to test as early as possible. Once you cross three days of fever, the diagnosis becomes difficult as tests stop picking the infection,” he said while his OPD was full of patients waiting for their turn.
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