According to the research, which has been published in the Journal of Travel Medicine, COVID-19 got induced into Indian states mainly due to international travels. The study has also found that infected cases from Tamil Nadu, Delhi and Andhra Pradesh played less role in spreading the disease outside their communities whereas infected people in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Kerala, Jammu and Kashmir, and Karnataka played a significant role in the local transmission, and some of them caused interstate transfer too.

“We tracked the spread of COVID-19 and its diffusion from the global to national level and identified a few super spreaders who played a central role in the transmission of the disease in India. The COVID-19 spread in phase one was traced using the travelling history of the patients, and it was found that most of the transmissions were local,” Sarita Azad, Assistant Professor, IIT Mandi, said. “The research team has used the travel history of infected patients from January to April as the primary data source and a social network was created depicting the spread in the early phase of the pandemic. The research found that the maximum numbers of connections were established from Dubai (144) and the UK ( 64),” she added.

“The modularity class of states such as Tamil Nadu, Delhi, and Andhra Pradesh was low. Hence, it is likely that infected cases from these states played less of a role in spreading the disease outside their communities. Whereas states like Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Kerala, Jammu and Kashmir, and Karnataka played a significant role in the local transmission, and some of them caused interstate transfer too,” she added.