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India's five-scenario approach to fight COVID-19

Last Updated 04 April 2020, 15:13 IST

India on Saturday unveiled a five-stage strategic approach to fight COVID-19, even as it witnessed the highest ever increase of confirmed cases – 601 – in a single day with the total number of infected patients touching 2902.

According to the Health Ministry, the current geographic distribution of COVID-19 has similarities with the H1N1 (bird flu) pandemic of 2009 and spread of the disease among the population could be high, but not uniform across the country.

The Containment Plan for Large Outbreaks of COVID-19, released by the Health Ministry on Saturday, have drawn up its strategic approach based on five scenarios viz. Travel related cases, local transmission, large outbreaks amenable to containment, widespread community transmission and the country becoming endemic to the disease.

Health ministry officials have been maintaining that the COVID-19 outbreak was still at the local transmission stage and current efforts were focused on managing hotspots and ensuring cluster management through aggressive tracing of contacts.

As on Saturday, health workers across the country had traced 1023 confirmed cases of COVID-19 – an astounding 35.25% of the total 2902 cases in the country so far – to the Tablighi Jamaat congregation in Delhi last month.

Aggressive contact tracing of those attending the meeting had led to placing 22,000 Jamaat members and their contacts under quarantine across the country.

Of the 2902 COVID-19 patients across the country, 8.61% fall in the age group of 0-20 years, 41.88% are in the age group of 21-40, 32.82% in 41-60 year and 16.69 % patients are above 60 years of age.

The health ministry document lists actions to be taken for containing a large outbreak, with the objective to stop the chain of transmission, thus reducing the morbidity and mortality due to COVID-19.

It noted that during the 2009 H1N1 Influenza Pandemic in India large number of cases were reported in large cities which has substantial movement of population. Rural areas and smaller towns with low population densities and poor connectivity had reported few cases.

“This calls for a differential approach to different regions of the country, while mounting a strong containment effort in hot spots,” it said adding that large scale measures to contain COVID-19 over large territories have been tried in China.

In India also, clusters have appeared in multiple states, particularly Kerala, Maharashtra,Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Punjab, Karnataka, Telangana and UT of Ladakh.

It said that as many as 211 districts were now reporting COVID-19 cases and the risk of further spread remains very high.

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(Published 04 April 2020, 15:04 IST)

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