At least 50 people, including 40 children, have died in Firozabad district of Uttar Pradesh in the last 10 days because of Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever, NDTV reported on Friday.

According to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, this is a “severe and sometimes fatal form of the disease”.

In a video, Firozabad District Magistrate Chandra Vijay Singh said that a team from the World Health Organization told him that people died due to Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever. “The platelet count of children collapses suddenly and there is a lot of bleeding,” he added.

The Centre has sent a team of experts from the National Centre for Disease Control and the National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme to Firozabad to help officials in the district.

Chief Medical Officer Dinesh Kumar Premi also confirmed that so far 50 people have died due to dengue and viral fever, PTI reported. But Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Manish Asija claimed that the toll has jumped to 61.

On Monday, Chief Minister Adityanath said that people had died due to “suspicious fever” and sought report from the authorities on the causes of the outbreak. On Wednesday, the state government transferred Firozabad Chief Medical Officer Neeta Kulshresth.

A day later, District Magistrate Chandra Vijay Singh suspended three doctors with immediate effect on charges of negligence.

Mathura, Etah, Hapur and Mainpuri have also reported a rise in cases of dengue, transmitted by female mosquitoes.

Visuals from a government hospital in Hapur, which is about 100 km from New Delhi, showed the pediatric ward teeming with children and their mothers.

Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra criticised the Adityanath government, asking whether the state had not learnt any lessons from the “horrific consequences” of its “disastrous” management of the second wave of Covid-19 pandemic.

The Congress general secretary claimed that over 100 people had died from the “viral fever” across the state. “All possible resources should be directed towards providing healthcare to the affected and taking adequate precautions to prevent the disease from spreading,” she wrote on Twitter.