KOLKATA, Sept. 22: At a time when dengue has caught Kolkata off guard, the city-based virus unit of Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has been blamed for keeping the state health department in the dark regarding the spread of the disease. The ICMR virus unit has helped the state over the past few years by carry out dengue confirmation tests. A few state health department officials said the ICMR virus unit, which has helped the state over the past few years by carrying out dengue confirmation tests, had not informed them of the number of cases verified in the city over the past one month. They also said the ICMR virus unit had stopped sending reports from 11 August. The unit had sent a report on 19 September after the state health department officials had contacted the unit officials. By this point, a total of 54 dengue cases had been confirmed in ward No. 30. Health department officials said they were unaware of the proliferation of dengue in this particular area as no report in this regard was sent to them. They also claimed the situation could have been handled easily if the unit had sent regular reports. Earlier, the ICMR used to send a weekly report to the state health department. A senior official said the unit had stopped sending notices to the health department after a research programme on dengue was initiated by it. Once the health department officials realised that ICMR was not sending reports regularly, they visited the unit and held a discussion with the concerned officials, following which a report was sent after more than a month. When asked why the ICMR virus unit was not sending reports, Dr Sekhar Chakraborty, deputy director of National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases (NICED) and officer-in-charge, ICMR virus unit said: