Is India In The Stage Of Community Transmission? A Look At States Which Have Admitted To It

As the debate on whether India has reached the community transmission stage continues, these states have announced that they are witnessing very rapid transmission similar to community spread.

(PTI Photo)

New Delhi: India’s Covid-19 positive cases have risen drastically and the total number of cases has crossed 11.5 lakh.  India is also the third-worst affected in the world after Brazil and the United States. Some states and experts are convinced that India’s high jump in the number of cases is due to community transmission. According to WHO, community transmission is larger outbreaks of local transmission that can be defined or identified through different approaches. It can be characterized by a situation where the original source of exposure cannot be found or cases that are detected through surveillance of a specific group of people. It can also be identified through multiple clusters in several areas. The inability to trace back the source of transmission in a well-defined geographical area can lead authorities to examine if there is community transmission. Although the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has denied it, some states have admitted to it.

• Kerala- At the beginning of the outbreak in India, the state had quickly become the epicentre with a very high concentration of cases. Several timely steps taken by the state government helped to curb the spread of the infection. But when the borders opened, the state saw a sudden spike in cases after which it has been struggling to bring it down. Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said last Friday that there is a community spread in some places in coastal areas of Thiruvananthapuram district and have declared these areas as Critical Containment Zone, putting them under strict lockdown until 28^th July 2020. According to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MOHFW) data, the state has recorded a total of 13,274 cases.
• West Bengal- West Bengal is another state that has admitted that some areas are affected by community transmission and it has resulted in a spike in cases. The Mamata Banerjee government on Monday announced a complete lockdown across the state for two days every week. In a report by Indian Express, Home Secretary Alapan Bandyopadhyay said “There are a few places in the state where community transmission of COVID-19 has been detected. After talking to experts, doctors, enforcement authorities, and the police, we have decided to impose complete lockdown for two days every week in the entire state to break the chain (of transmission).” West Bengal has recorded 44769 so far according to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

• Assam- The state health minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma stated that there was a spike in positive cases and most of them are coming from community transmission. He was quoted in the Economic Times saying “On Saturday we got 30 percent positive cases from the total tests done in Guwahati. In the last 10 days, we got around 2741 positive cases (in Kamrup Metro) and all are from the community. Earlier we used to get cases from people coming from outside. Now it is in Guwahati and it is becoming bigger and bigger and it has become real.” While Guwahati went under lockdown house-to-house testing started as well. Assam has recorded 25,382 so far according to MOHFW data.

Dr. Arvind Kumar A doctor in Delhi’s Ganga Ram Hospital, who is the Chairman of Centre for Chest Surgery, was quoted as saying by Times of India that he was certain that community transmission had begun in India. “It was localised to pockets; for instance, in Dharavi and several areas of Delhi, almost the whole community was involved. There were some cases where you could clearly pinpoint the contact, and there were many where you could not pinpoint the contact and it was happening. These were pockets for community transmission but not to crisscross community. However, today, the infection has spread across the country,”