PATNA: The state has witnessed nearly nine-time increase in the daily dengue cases registered in the past 15 days with almost 25% of the people carrying the virus came from outside Bihar. Nearly 85% of the total dengue cases this year have been registered in the first 15 days of this month. The AIIMS-Patna, which is conducting serology tests, has also seen an increase in the positivity rate ranging from 25% to 40%.On September 1, the state had 25 dengue cases in a day, which increased to 213 cases in a day on September 15, while a total of 250 new cases were registered a day before on September 14.Health department secretary Sanjay Singh said the overall positivity rate of the state was not high and places like Bettiah and Motihari had it around 2%. However, the data collected a couple of days back showed Bhagalpur having the highest positivity rate between 60 to 70% compared to 20 to 30% in Patna. "Of the total positive dengue cases, 25% were those who had returned to Bihar with dengue from places like Kota, Punjab, Chandigarh, Bengaluru and Dehradun," said Singh.He further said though cases has been increasing in the past few days, including hospitalisation of dengue patients, there was a slight dip in the new cases as well as in the hospitalisations on Friday. As per the data, 226 people were undergoing treatment across different government hospitals on September 14, which came down to 196 on September 16.AIIMS-P director Dr Gopal Krushna said they have also witnessed a slight increase in positivity rate in the past three to four days at their hospital and it ranged from 25% to 40%, while earlier it was 10 to 15%. He said while the number of patients being admitted was increasing, the good thing was that no one was in critical condition and people were getting discharged after recovering. When asked about the peak, he replied, "It cannot be predicted now."

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