Dengue fever is back with a vengeance and, just as expected, it has started overwhelming healthcare facilities in Punjab, where 1,000 active cases have already been reported. The situation is particularly grim in Lahore, which counts for more than 90 per cent of the cases in the province. What is a little odd, though, is that this annual trend caught the provincial government completely off guard even though a dengue invasion of the plains of Punjab is typical for this time of the year when summer begins to give way to fall. The going excuse is that with everybody busy with Covid, dengue just managed to slip under the radar this one time. But that’s simply unacceptable because no matter how busy the administration is at any particular point in time there is never any justification for taking the eye off the ball; not the least when a life-threatening epidemic is expected to make its annual visit. There was also no effort on part of the government to warn people about the situation and brief them about necessary safety protocols. And now, as always, that the authorities have been caught unawares, they will scramble in a desperate attempt at damage control. That, quite literally, amounts to playing with the lives of people. An awareness-building campaign was even more necessary this time because even people showing symptoms would hesitate to go to hospitals because of the dreaded Covid wave. But in the complete absence of any sort of official notifications, people have been left to figure the situation out on their own. And they haven’t done a very good job of it; nor would they be expected to. Nobody wants to go back to the time when dengue fever brought this country to its knees. Back then the government’s ignorance had some justification because it had never seen anything like this before. But once everybody saw the kind of damage that his virus can do, it was believed that the government would never find itself behind the curve in matters like this again. Yet that is exactly what has happened. It must still begin an aggressive campaign that will build a national narrative about staying safe and keeping others safe, in such environments. Everything must be done to keep a bad situation from getting any worse. *