Community spread of COVID-19: Satyendar Jain has been insisting that Delhi is in stage 3 of the pandemic
New Delhi:
Amid an increase in coronavirus cases in India, Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain mocked the center today when he said: “We are stuck in technical terms” and the government should have admitted that India is in the stage of “community spread”.
“When cases are increasing on such a large scale in Delhi and other parts of the country, we should have accepted that there is community spread. I think we are stuck in technical terms here … but only ICMR (the country’s leading medical research body ) or the central government can comment on this. “
Responding to a question about whether there is community spread in Delhi, Jain said: “It doesn’t matter what I think. I can safely say that there is spread within the community. Community spread is a technical term … scientists are better equipped to tell this. “
India, the second worst affected country in the world after the United States, reported more than 90,000 cases a day in September; This month there have been more than 16 lakhs of new cases. Her case count is 53 lakh and the disease has affected most states and territories in the union.
Since the beginning of June, when Delhi saw a sharp increase in cases, the AAP government has been urging the central government to declare that community transmission is unknown as a source of infection in “at least 50 percent of cases.”
However, the center had argued that the prevalence is too low in the country. “We are definitely not in community broadcasting. It’s just a term,” ICMR director general Balram Bhargava said at the time.
Speaking to reporters today, Jain said that despite Delhi’s growing numbers, its positivity rate has dropped to 7 percent and lower in the past week, indicating an improvement.
“The positivity rate in Delhi was 6.76 percent yesterday. Last week it was over 8 percent. This is the first time that the overall positivity rate has been below 10 percent (9.83 percent), “he said.
In the past five days, the Aam Aadmi Party government has added 500 ICU beds in Delhi hospitals as the death from COVID-19 reached 30, double what it was a month ago. The case duplication rate in the city-state also increased to 40 from 101 in late August.
Of the four stages of the Covid outbreak, Stage 1 is when cases are imported from affected countries. Only those who traveled abroad test positive. Stage 2 is when there is local transmission from infected people.
Stage 3 or community transmission is when a patient not exposed to any infected person or one who has not traveled to any of the affected countries tests positive. At this stage, people detected as positive cannot identify where they got the virus from.
.
