Bala Chauhan By

Express News Service

BENGALURU: There is no evidence of community transmission of the new coronavirus in India as of now. The 820 random samples collected by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) to check whether India has entered Stage 3 of the new coronavirus transmission have tested negative, states the latest ICMR report.

The ICMR had collected 820 random samples of patients suffering from severe acute respiratory illness (SARI), who had no history of travel or contact with known COVID-19 patients in order to check community transmission of the new coronavirus in India. “All the 820 samples have tested negative,” Dr Nivedita Gupta, Senior Scientist, Division of Epidemiology & Communicable Diseases, ICMR, told TNIE. She added that the ICMR will continue testing samples from SARI patients for increased surveillance.

The samples were collected from the 51 centres of the ICMR located across the country. “This is very good news and probably indicates that community spread of the virus has not occurred so far. This is the time the country should focus on various measures such as social distancing, home quarantine, preventing large gatherings of public and increasing public awareness,” said Head of Department of Neurovirology, National Institute of Mental Health & Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS), Dr V Ravi. “These measures, if taken on a war footing and implemented sincerely across the country, will avert a major epidemic,” he said.

Currently, India is on Stage 2 of the coronavirus transmission, where the number of cases is gradually on the rise.Restriction on international travel, early screening, detection, lockdown of public places, personal hygiene and social distancing have helped the country of 1.4 billion in containing the spread of the pandemic so far.

Time to up guard

 ICMR is checking India’s vulnerability to the new pathogen

 Samples taken from patients suffering from severe acute respiratory illness, who had no history of travel or contact with known COVID-19 patients in order to check community transmission

 This is the time the country should focus on various measures such as social distancing, home quarantine, says head of Department of Neurovirology, NIMHANS,Dr V Ravi.

ICMR is checking India’s vulnerability to new pathogen, which has claimed 7,426 lives globally