‘No proof of community transmission of Covid-19 in Odisha’

Minati Singha | TNN | Apr 6, 2020, 04:33 IST

Bhubaneswar: The Odisha government on Sunday ruled out the fear of community transmission of the novel coronavirus or Covid-19 in the state after tracing the travel history of the 21 who have tested positive for the virus here.
“There was apprehension of community transmission of Covid-19 as the sources of infection of the positive cases from Surya Nagar and Bomikhal areas could not be detected. Through door-to-door surveillance in the containment zones and meticulously planned tracking of contacts of the persons who have tested positive for the virus, it was established that the infection of Covid-19 was sourced from outside the state,” chief secretary Asit Kumar Tripathy said.
He added, “There has been no evidence of any community transmission of the disease in the state so far. Since the travel history of the fifth Covid-19 positive patient was not known initially, we were fearing that the number of persons found positive owing to community transmission had increased. But we later concluded that the fear was unfounded.”
After the Surya Nagar and Bomikhal cases, the state government was apprehending that these were instances of community transmission and had declared the two areas as containment zones. Consequently, the government had ordered a 48-hour shutdown of the entire city till 8pm on Sunday.
The chief secretary said, “A family member of the 60-year-old patient of Surya Nagar had visited Kolkata and stayed there for four days. Later, she was also found positive with six others. Similarly, the three Covid-19 positive brothers of Bomikhal area might have contracted the infection from their father staying in Bhopal currently.”
The motive behind the 48-hour shutdown was to investigate whether the outbreak of the virus in the city was owing to community transmission. “During investigation, it was found that there was no community transmission in the city as the two cases had links to other states. While the Surya Nagar case was linked to Kolkata, the Bomikhal case was linked to Bhopal. This was the major advantage the state government had during the shutdown,” Tripathy pointed out.
He maintained that the government had authorised the district and municipal administrations to identify Covid-19 hots pots that will be declared as containment zones and restrictions will be imposed on the movement of public as per the WHO and ministry of health guidelines. The standard operating procedures have been prepared and sent to the district authorities to be followed strictly in the containment zones.
“The government will identify the containment zones in the localities from where the positive cases were detected. These limited areas will be contained and restrictions will be imposed on the households in these areas. The door-to-door enquiry, surveillance and contact tracing will be conducted in these areas. All symptomatic people in the locality will be tested later. Random samples will also be collected,” Tripathy said.
However, doctors in community medicine said there are some grey areas in declaring the stage of transmission. “There is no clear-cut guideline for a shift from stage-II to stage-III of the transmission of the disease. A number of precautions have to be taken before announcing community transmission. The shutdown approach taken up by the government is called cluster approach by WHO and may be helpful in containing the spread of the virus,” Dr E Venkata Rao of the community medicine department, IMS and SUM Hospital, Bhubaneswar, said.