A cop from the city’s northern fringes who became a mother last month and a homemaker from Howrah died of dengue over the past two days, civic officials said.

Runu Biswas, 28, a Calcutta police constable posted at Amherst Street police station, died at a private hospital off the EM Bypass around 6am on Wednesday.

Biswas was admitted to a New Town hospital on October 25 after running a temperature for 10 days, a relative said.

“She was in the 34th week of pregnancy when she tested positive for dengue. She gave birth to a girl on October 26. Her platelet count started dropping a couple of days after delivery. The count dipped to 65,000 on October 29 from 1.25 lakh the day before,” said an official of the private hospital where she was admitted.

On October 29, Biswas was shifted to a private hospital off the Bypass, where she was kept in the critical care unit, an official of the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation said.

The death certificate mentions “dengue fever” and “septic shock with multi-organ failure”.

Biswas lived in Ashwininagar Udayan Palli, a congested pocket of Baguiati barely 2km from VIP Road. The area is full of under-construction buildings, likely breeding grounds for the dengue-transmitting Aedes aegypti mosquito.

The garbage-choked Bagjola canal, filled with plastic cups and plates, runs along the area that falls under ward 18 of the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation.

“We are conducting sensitisation programmes in the area but the residents lack awareness. Freshwater is stored in almost every household,” said Pranay Roy, the mayoral council member (health) of the civic body.

Keya Goswami, 26, a homemaker from Howrah, died at a private hospital on Tuesday.

A resident of Chatterjee Haat, Goswami had been running a temperature since October 29. She was first taken to a nursing home in Santragachhi, from where she was shifted to a private hospital on Andul Road on Monday after her condition deteriorated.

Goswami died at 6.40pm on Tuesday, a hospital official said. Her death certificate mentions “dengue shock syndrome with multi-organ failure”.

An official of the Howrah Municipal Corporation said Goswami was the fourth dengue victim in Howrah this season. “Over 1,500 cases have been reported, half of them in the past 40 days,” he said. The trend is similar in Calcutta.