Coronavirus: No community transmission yet, need to be alert, says Centre

The Centre on Friday insisted that the COVID-19 outbreak in the country has not entered the community transmission phase, virtually debunking Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh’s claims of indications that his state was “moving into” that phase.

Centre pointed out that the infection rate of COVID-19 was 2% as only 320 of the 16,002 samples tested on Thursday had tested positive.

“There is no community transmission yet. There is no need to panic, but we need to remain aware and alert. If there is community transmission, we would be the first to inform you,” Lav Aggarwal, Joint Secretary, Health Ministry, told reporters here. He also sought to downplay the findings of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) study suggesting local transmission of COVID-19 in the country.

“The ICMR study refers to positive cases from our own VRDL (Viral Research and Diagnostic Labs) labs located in places where there are COVID-19 cases. These samples are not from places where there are no cases of COVID-19,” Aggarwal said.

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India reported 33 deaths due to COVID-19 since Thursday, taking the nationwide toll to 199. The number of positive cases also increased by 678 in a single day to touch 6412.

Addressing the media through video conferencing from Chandigarh, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh expressed fear of COVID-19 outbreak entering the community transmission phase as 27 new patients tested on Thursday had no travel or contact history.

ICMR has also stepped up testing over the past few days and had tested 16,002 samples on Thursday, a significant jump from a couple of thousands it was testing a week ago.

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“A total of 1,44,910 samples were tested till 9 pm on Thursday from 1,03,792 suspected patients, of which 5,075 returned positive. We conducted 16,002 tests in a single day. It has increased substantially,” Manoj Murhekar, Director, National Institute of Epidemiology, said.

The ICMR has also widened its COVID-19 testing strategy to include all patients with influenza-like symptoms such as fever, cough, sore throat, runny nose in hotspots and cluster zones of the viral outbreak.