Thiruvananthapuram: The blood samples collected from fever patients at Vizhinjam have tested negative for dengue fever, the district health administration has said.

Following a spurt in viral fever cases in the Vizhinjam area in the past week, the health authorities had taken blood samples of patients to test for dengue as well as to rule out the possibility of chikungunya fever. All 13 samples that were sent to the public health laboratory tested negative for dengue.

The results of the samples sent to Pune to test for chikungunya will take a while.

Meanwhile, a 65-year-old woman, Chellamma, of Kottappuram, Vizhinjam, who had come to the out-patient (OP) clinic at the Vizhinjam Community Health Centre (CHC) a few days ago with fever, died on Friday.

The district health authorities said the woman was a renal patient who died from complications related to her problem and not because of fever. She had been referred from the OP at the Vizhinjam CHC to General Hospital and later to Medical College Hospital (MCH) on Friday. However, she died en route to the MCH.

It has also been reported that the local people at Vizhinjam created a furore at the CHC on Friday alleging that it had no facilities to treat fever patients. Though the CHC has five posts of doctors, two of the doctors are on maternity leave.

A medical team had been despatched to the hospital to tide over the situation, the district health authorities said.

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