Bhubaneswar: A day after detection of the third coronavirus case, Odisha government’s Chief Spokesperson on COVID-19 Subroto Bagchi on Friday informed the media about the lurking danger of community transmission in the state.
“During phase-1, the focus was on foreign returnees and later the surveillance shifted to people coming to Odisha from other states. With the third confirmed case, we see a possibility of the outbreak moving into stage 3, which is community transmission,” he said.
Bagchi also attributed the apprehensions to 78,000 people, including migrant labourers who have returned to Odisha from other states.
The Health Department will soon issue fresh guidelines to combat the emerging situation and contain COVID-19 in the state, he added.
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India is on the cusp of reaching community transmission. At this stage, the number of infected persons increase and it is found that people test positive even if they or their relative have not travelled to any affected country. At this stage, the virus spreads rapidly.
In the initial stage, the patients are “imported”, which means only those who have travelled abroad and contracted this virus from affected countries. There is no local transmission as yet. If the relatives or acquaintances of the persons with a travel history test positive for COVID-19, it then triggers local transmission within the community. This mostly happens due to ignorance of the travellers, who seem perfect in health but are carriers if this deadly virus, e.g. the Kanika Kapoor case.
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Epidemic is the stage 4 of the transmission when things will go out of control and the spread of the disease cannot be stopped or slowed down. This is what China dealt with.
