India may have slipped into the stage -III in the Coronavirus hot spots as more and more people having no travel history are getting infected, a study says.
According to the data compiled bythe Indian Council of Medical Research, the nodal body in the battle againstthe virus, showed that 38 per cent of such patients, who later tested positivefor the virus, had no history of travel.
SARI is Severe Acute RespiratoryIllness, and the ICMR was conducting random tests on them to check if anycommunity transmission of the virus was happening.
So far, most patients in Indiaacquired the virus from their travels abroad, or from someone who travelledabroad. This makes zeroing in on patients and isolating them, and therebycurbing the spread of the virus, relatively easy.
But experiences of other nationshave shown that as the infection spreads, there comes a time when it is nolonger possible to trace the source. That state is called stage 3 or communitytransmission, when there is a surge in the infection.
In the weeks before Mach 14, noSARI patient had tested positive for coronavirus, ICMR data shows.
But when the policy was changed –instead of random tests, all SARI patients were tested — two of 106 patientswere found positive between March 15 and March 21.
The big change came thereafter.Between March 22 and Mach 28, of the 2,877 patients tested, 48 (1.7 percent) were found positive. Between March29 and April 2, 54 out of 2,069 SARI patients, 54 (2.6 per cent) testedpositive for coronavirus.
Altogether, out of 5,911 SARIpatients, 104 (1.8 per cent) have tested positive for COVID-19.
Forty of these patients did notreport any history of international travel or contact. Such cases were reportedfrom 36 Indian districts in 15 states. ICMR in its report has said "Thesedistricts need to be prioritised to target COVID-19 containmentactivities."
Two patients reported contactwith a confirmed case and one reported recent history of international travel.The ICMR said data on exposure history was not available for 59 (57.8 per cent)patients.
The biggest number of SARIpatients – 21 — tested positive for coronavirus in Maharashtra. Delhi had 14positive cases and Gujarat 13 cases. However, it is important to note thatsample sizes were different for each state and the ICMR has cautioned in itsreport that the data is not "representative of the entire district orstate".
