LAHORE: Dengue continues to pose threat to the health of people in the country despite the actions taken by the federal and provincial governments to control the spread of the virus. Cases continue to surface in different parts of the country every day, reported 24NewsHD TV channel.

An alarming development was reported in Lahore where a member of the Dengue Experts Advisory Group and head of the Anesthesia Department at Jinnah Hospital Professor Ashraf Zia on Wednesday, informed the residents of Lahore of the birth of D-2, a new variant of dengue.

He said that variant is extremely harmful, especially for pregnant women, babies inside their wombs and infants.

He informed, three children suffering from the variant were admitted to the intensive care unit of the Jinnah Hospital in critical condition.

The Head of the Anesthesia Department highlighted the symptoms of the patients suffering from the new variant are high fever which causes them unconsciousness as well.

According to the Punjab health secretary Irshad Ahmad, 326 cases of dengue have been reported from different parts of Punjab during the last 24 hours.

“Out of these 163 were reported from Lahore, 88 from Rawalpindi, 26 from Gujranwala, six from Kasur, and five from Multan,” he added, no loss of life was reported in the province during this period.

The official said that out of a total of 5,737 cases of dengue reported across the province this year, 2,441 had been reported from Lahore alone and eight people have lost their lives.

The health secretary informed that 933 patients with the virus were presently admitted to different hospitals in the province.

To control the situation provincial government informed that the health department teams searched for larvae in 416,198 indoor and 104,728 outdoor places in Punjab in the last 24 hours, “Out of these, the teams found larvae at 2,413 sites.”

The officials advised people to take precautionary measures against dengue. “Keep your surroundings clean. Don’t let water accumulate so that birth of the larvae could be prevented,” and appealed to religious clerics to make people aware of the hazards of the virus.