New Delhi: A week after it said in an official release that "some cases of community transmission" of Covid-19, the infectious disease caused by novel Coronavirus, were observed, the Union Health Ministry on Thursday denied there were any community transmissions. Without offering an explanation on why the official release was not withdrawn over the past week, ministry officials said only local transmission has been reported.
"There is no community transmission, it is local transmission only. If the source of the transmission can be traced, it is called local transmission," said Lav Agarwal, Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. "When local transmission becomes huge and we cannot locate the source, then it becomes a community transmission."
In a press release on March 5, the government said: "...In addition to Covid-19 cases related to travel, some cases of community transmission have also been observed. It has been decided to involve district collectors and states have been asked to form rapid response teams at the district, block and village levels."
As of Thursday evening, India had confirmed 74 cases of coronavirus out of which 57 are Indians and 17 foreigners. Three of the 74 have already been cured and discharged from hospitals.
Senior scientists from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and Health Ministry officials said 13 lakh people, both foreigners and Indians, have been screened so far and of those samples of only 6,200 people were tested for Covid-19.
Even as the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the disease a pandemic, India will stick to its current testing parameters, said ministry officials. "As far as testing parameters are concerned, only those with travel history, contact history and those with symptoms are being tested," said Agarwal.
He added that one lakh testing kits are available and more have been ordered.
"We do not think the numbers of laboratories handling the tests are inadequate for the scale of outbreak we are facing. Only at the National Institute of Virology can we test 2,500 samples and only 6,200 samples have been tested. So we are not challenged in terms of increase in testing capacity,” said Dr Raman R Gangakhedkar, a senior scientist at ICMR.
Gangakhedkar said so far there was no evidence of any death due to the virus and that ICMR scientists will soon start to investigate if there are possible cases of community transmissions by studying cohorts.
"So far if you ask me, there is no evidence available that we are missing any cases as such. We belong to science and would like to see evidence that we are missing cases. Our network of surveillance is strong and symptomatic persons are being tested. If in the worse case, if they die, it would have been picked up," he added.
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