NEW DELHI: Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain on Tuesday said the source of infection in nearly half the fresh cases in the city was “not known,” indicating that community transmission of the disease was taking place, even as his colleague Manish Sisodia said the government’s projection was that the number of cases by July end would be 5.5 lakh.

“There are many cases being reported in Delhi whose source is unknown. Even in the L-G (Lt Governor’s) house tests had to be conducted and those who tested positive their source could not be traced,” Jain said after a meeting of the state disaster management team.He said whether community spread was taking place can only be announced by the Central government but “we can say that there is spread.”

“Without going into the technicalities I can say that there is spread but it is for the Centre to declare if it is community spread,” he said.

Asked what measures can be taken if the infection reaches community transmission level, Jain said “stress is then laid more on treatment, currently we are doing more rigorous contact tracing to stop the infection from spreading.”

Public health experts pointed out that all across the world political leaders seem to have taken community transmission as an indicator of government failure.

“That is not the case. It is just one phase of a pandemic going through a community, which can be managed well with the aim of minimizing loss of life,” said public health researcher Oommen C Kurian. “Unfortunately denial has become fashionable and there are strong disincentives in accepting community transmission.”

Health researcher Oommen John underlined that while on the one hand the message is that cases needing hospitalized care is rapidly increasing and there is a debate about rationing beds, there is a denial which is irrational. “If there is no active transmission in the community where are these cases coming from?” he asked.

Sisodia, for the first time, reeled out the Delhi government’s projections of the coronavirus’s spread and said by July end the national capital could see 5.5 lakh positive cases which would require at least 80,000 hospital beds.

Those with a pulse on Delhi’s health infrastructure scenario said arranging for such a high number of beds could be a “tall order.”

“We were initially hoping that containment efforts will largely work but after the opening of the lockdown, Covid-19 is spreading rapidly,” said Dr Nimmi Rastogi, health co-ordinator for the AAP government.
“Our effort will be to triage patient and only moderately and severely sick patients will be hospitalised while those with mild symptoms will be asked to stay home with guidance from doctors—but given the projected surge in cases even this may not be easy,”she said.

The state currently has about 11,000 beds in state government hospitals, 20,000 beds in private hospitals and 10,000 beds under the Centre.