“Though the risk of the infection spreading increases in crowded areas, it is not directly related to water or hygiene,” said Dr Parveen Kumar, an expert on preventive medicine. He, however, added that weather conditions could render many susceptible to infection.

Workers outside the Games Village site, however, had different stories to tell. Many of them said that a number of people have been hospitalised and that some people had also died in the past 15 days. “Many people were sent to hospitals but they have not returned yet. Everyone is saying they have died,” said one worker, who refuses to disclose his name.

Some workers say that people have already started leaving the site and finding work elsewhere or are returning to their villages in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. However, one worker says that such rumours are untrue and adds that some people have been taken ill due to the fact that they do not maintain personal hygiene.

There are about 2,000 workers at the site, says an MCD official. They stay in a continuous row of 250-300 temporary hutments made of asbestos sheets. These have dormitories with multi-level sleeping arrangements. Up to 20-25 workers can sleep in a dormitory. Some of the hutments are reportedly unoccupied.

Sources say an MCD team that visited the place recently found that the toilets were unhygienic and the place was overcrowded. Part of the reason, they said, was that the workers there were not very aware of the importance of hygiene. So, on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, a team of 30-35 MCD officials undertook a cleanliness drive at the site in collaboration with Ahluwalia Constructions, the company that has the contract.

Blood samples were taken for malaria detection, but none was found positive. Also, water samples from the site were taken and were found to be lacking in chlorine content. As chlorine is a germicide, the water here may not be very safe, said an official. The company, however, has one reverse osmosis plant at the site. There is also an ambulance and a doctor present at the site.