With reports of adenovirus infections ravaging Kolkata since January, the city and adjoining towns are virtually on sickbeds. Hundreds of patients, including children are falling ill with fever, cough and respiratory trouble in the city.

Some of them are rushed to hospitals showing symptoms like shortness of breath.

The state health department officials held a meeting at Swasthya Bhaban on Saturday to take stock of the adenoviruses outbreak situation in the state.

Virologists and experts in communicable diseases feared that there has been an unprecedentedly alarming surge in number of adenovirus-affected cases this year in the city and its bordering towns after the Covid-19 pandemic that had hit the country three years ago.

Adenoviruses are a group of common viruses that can infect eyes, urinary and respiratory tracts as well as lungs and intestines causing fever, coughs with throats sore and diarrhea.

Children are mostly vulnerable to this viral disease.

Adenoviruses are very contagious and can spread when someone who has infected coughs with sneezing. Droplets of an adenovirus-affected patient fly into air and land on surfaces. “We have found an alarming presence of adenoviruses in swab samples tested in our laboratory. Around 30 per cent of suspects’ swab samples have been tested positive since January. Most of the infected patients are children and the trend is really alarming,” said Dr Shanta Dutta, director of National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD), under the Indian Council of Medical research (ICMR), run by the health ministry in the city.

“Around 500 samples have been tested so far in our laboratory during January. Besides adenovirus infections, Parainfluenza viruses are also found in samples. We are also keeping a watch whether there has been any change in characters of viruses,” Dr Dutta added.

A spokesperson of a private chain of hospitals said, “One hundred and fifteen patients are admitted to our all three units at Dhakuria, Salt Lake and Mukundapur in the city with respiratory illness. Twenty two, including four children out of the 115 patients are undergoing treatment in ICUs and HDUs respectively. Most of the patients are suffering from adenoviruses, nonCovid-19 coronavirus, influenza, parainfluenza, rhinovirus, pneumococcus.”

Beds in several other private hospitals in the city are also being filled regularly with cases suffering from fever with breathing trouble.