NEW DELHI: Just two days after top government authorities asserted that India has not reached community transmission stage of the COVID-19, the Centre has asked doctors to view people with related symptoms who live in or have been to “location (s) reporting community transmission” as “suspect cases”.

In the revised clinical management protocol issued on Saturday, the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has defined suspect, probable and confirmed cases.

In the document, a suspect case has been defined as “a patient with acute respiratory illness (fever and at least one sign/symptom of respiratory disease, e.g., cough, shortness of breath), and a patient with acute respiratory illness (fever and at least one sign/symptom of respiratory disease, e.g., cough, shortness of breath).”

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Such a case can also be someone with “a history of travel to or residence in a location reporting community transmission of Covid-19 disease during the 14 days prior to symptom onset.”

On Thursday, in a press briefing to announce partial results of the serosurvey—conducted to gauge the spread of SARS CoV 2 virus in the country, Indian Council of Medical Research director-general Dr Balaram Bhargava and Dr V K Paul, who heads the national task COVID-9 had said that there is no community transmission so far.

Sharing some of the results of the survey—based on the representative antibody-based survey carried out in 83 districts, Dr Bhargava had said that 0.73 per cent of the population in non-hotspot districts had been found to be exposed to the virus.

“The prevalence has been found to be less than 1 per cent in small districts. In urban and containment areas it may be slightly higher. But, India is definitely not in community transmission. I would like to emphasize it,” Dr Bhargava had said and Dr Paul too spoke on similar lines.

Given that the government maintains that there is no community transmission of the disease yet—the new, conflicting message has left public health specialists perplexed and angered.

“If the government has to err, it has to be on the higher side but the opposite seems to be happening,” said Dr Anupam Singh, an infectious disease expert. “There is a clear contradiction in what the authorities are saying in public and what this document says.”

An email query sent to the health ministry seeking the government response on how are clinicians expected to identify “location with community transmission” when there is no list of such areas, however, has remained unanswered so far.

In a strong-worded statement issued on Saturday, Progressive Medicos and Scientists Forum--a group of doctors and scientists-- meanwhile said that “many fallacious arguments seemed to have been forwarded to ultimately claim that there is no community transmission as of date in the country.”

“Just a day before their conference, the health minister of Delhi had accepted that in more than 50 per cent of the cases they had failed to zero in on the source of infection. What else is this Dr Bhargava if not community transmission?” the group asked.