Nearly 650 people, mostly children, have died from an outbreak of Japanese encephalitis in northern India after 55 more people perished over the weekend, officials said Sunday. Hospitals in India's largest state, Uttar Pradesh, were struggling to cope with the influx of patients suffering from the mosquito-borne disease. Another 87 people were hospitalized during the weekend, bringing the number of patients to more than 3,040, said O.P. Singh, the state's director general of health services. But the number of new infections has declined in recent days, Singh said. With 55 deaths since Friday night, the overall death toll reached 649, The Associated Press reported.
