Coronavirus: Centre finally admits to community transmission, says limited to certain districts

Over nine months after India reported the first known case of coronavirus, the Centre has now admitted to community trasmission of Covid-19 in the country. According to news agency PTI, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on Sunday said community transmission of the coronavirus infection is restricted to certain districts in a limited number of states.

He further clarified that community transmission is not happening across the country.

What did the Union Minister say?

The minister made the statement during an interaction with his social media followers on the sixth episode of “Sunday Samvaad”.

According to PTI, Vardhan was responding to a question from a participant, who cited West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s remark about instances of community transmission in Bengal. The participant asked the minister which are the states that have witnessed community transmission of the disease.

“In different pockets across various states, including West Bengal, community transmission of COVID-19 is expected to occur, especially in densely-populated areas.

“However, this is not happening across the country. Community transmission is limited to certain districts, occurring in a limited number of states,” Vardhan said, as reported by PTI.

He added that as yet, no mutation of the coronavirus has been detected in India that is either more transmission-efficient or more pathogenic.

Centre admits community transmission for the first time

The Centre so far has denied community transmission of the coronavirus infection in the country.

Health ministry officials had said the World Health Organization (WHO) has not given any standard definition of community transmission.

In June this year, responding to a question by India Today regarding community transmission of the novel coronavirus in India, the representative from the ICMR said, “There is a heightened debate around this term – community transmission, having said that, I think even the WHO has not given a definition for it and as we have shown that India is such a large country and the prevalence is so low.

“India is not in community transmission and I would like to emphasise it,” Director General of ICMR Balram Bhargava had said.

What is community transmission?

At the community transmission stage (or the “Stage 3” of an outbreak), a disease spreads in the population is such a way that people don’t know how they were exposed to the contagion: they haven’t travelled to a part of the world that’s currently battling an outbreak, or haven’t been in contact with someone they know has the coronavirus.

India’s current coronavirus tally

India’s Covid-19 tally mounted to 74,94,551 on Sunday with 61,871 fresh cases reported in a day, while the death toll due to the disease climbed to 1,14,031 with 1,033 more people succumbing to it in a span of 24 hours, health ministry’s data updated at 8 am on Sunday showed.

(With inputs from PTI)



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