Shying away from facts

 Despite one of the harshest lockdowns in the world which began on March 25, COVID-19 cases in India are inching towards the 3-lakh mark as on June 12,2020. The country has been recording close to 10,000 cases for the last 10 days, and it has added nearly 90,000 or nearly one-third cases of the total tally. However, despite clear indications of community transmission, the government of India is still reluctant to admit that community transmission is taking place. The reluctance has surprised many health experts since the total cases reported even on May 10 had already crossed 63,500, and the nature of spread in most cases was through droplet transmission and contact with contaminated surfaces. In contrast, when the total number of cases in the US was just 60 on February 26, it confirmed community spread following the detection in California of the first case with no travel history or contact with a known positive case. The country’s premier health authority-the Indian Council of Medical Research(ICMR)- has been flip-flopping over the issue. On March 28, the Health Ministry acknowledged that there was “limited community transmission” of the novel coronavirus in India. On April 9, the ICMR and Health Ministry researchers – some of them are national task force members for COVID-19 – in a journal paper, provided evidence suggesting the prevalence of community transmission in 36 districts across 15 States. However on June 11, the ICMR denied that community transmission has taken place in India. In another recent indication of community transmission, the preliminary result of government’s nationwide survey of asymptomatic people has found that Covid-19 might be prevailing in 15-30% of population in hotspot or high-load districts. According to noted epidemiologist and former principal of Christian Medical College Vellore Dr.Jayaprakash Muliyil, who is also member of the ICMR-constituted sub-group on epidemiology and surveillance; trying to control or eradicating coronavirus now is out of question, so the approach should be to slow it down. He said presently, contact tracing won’t be of much help because tracing everyone at this stage will be difficult. Among 130 districts under several states the prominent metros such as -Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru and Hyderabad have been declared as Red Zones (districts with higher coronavirus case load or have a high growth rate of the virus). On June 11, Assam health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma also declared that community spread has already taken place in Guwahati. Earlier, Delhi health minister Satyendra Jain had also admitted the likelihood of community transmission in the state where COVID cases have been showing spikes. Epidemiologists and health experts were of the view that community transmission has been evident right from April. The central government’s repeated and continuing denial of community transmission of coronavirus is futile and counterproductive to slowing down the rise in cases, epidemiologists and health experts say. Dr Jacob John, a prominent virologist pointed out that even by the ICMR’s own data showing that less than one percent – 0.73% – of cases across 83 districts showed evidence of past exposure to confirmed cases, was evidence of community transmission. Medical experts say the truth of community transmission is not something that should even be up for debate at this point. The question that needs to be asked is why is the government of India not admitting that community transmission has taken place? This would only make the fight against coronavirus difficult as public will lose trust on the government.