13 Coronavirus cases in Guwahati have no travel history, reveals Himanta Biswa Sarma

Guwahati: Assam Finance and Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Wednesday revealed that 13 Coronavirus patients in Guwahati city do not have any travel history.

On Wednesday, Biswa Sarma along with Minister Pijush Hazarika and MP Biswajit Daimary visited 3 containment zones (Sarabhatti, Bishnupur, and Panbazar) where he hinted at a community transmission in Guwahati city, which has reported a huge bulk of the Covid-19 cases in the state.

Biswa Sarma said that two pharmacy company employees have tested positive for the virus in Panbazar. "In this area, this is the 3rd case within a 100 metre radius. People come here from all over, people purchase medicines, and stock comes in", Sarma said, adding that the strain will have to be stopped. Sarma said that in total, around 13 cases without any travel history have been detected in the community stage.

This admission of the Health Minister has started giving rise to apprehensions that Guwahati, that has reported in excess of 200 cases, could be declared as a Red Zone in the near future.

Although the Assam Government has largely done away with the colour-coding system, Biswa Sarma has indicated that once the number of cases in a region exceeds 200, it could be declared as an orange or red zone to contain the spread. "Typically, we will attack where the infection is reported from so that people from far-off areas are not impacted." Henceforth, Sarma said, "precision-based" activity will be taken so as to strike the disease at its base. "However, if a district reports more than 200 cases, we will have to mark that district as red zone or other categories", Biswa Sarma told the media on May 21.

It needs mention here that Biswa Sarma had earlier admitted that if the Covid-19 transmission in the state reaches the third (or community transmission) phase, the fight will be long and arduous.

"The first phase (of transmission) is the lockdown, the second phase is that of incoming migrants. The current graph will go down after June 15 as the number of incoming migrants will go down considerably as most of the migrants will have returned by then", Sarma said, responding to a query during a media address at the Haflong Civil Hospital.

Sarma said that the third phase will be that of community transmission. "If we do not get there, well and good. However, if we do get there, the fight will be long drawn out. Other factors -- such as how soon we are able to develop a vaccine and medicines -- will come into play. If it does arrive, nothing can be predicted at the moment. All the patients will not be asymptomatic; there will be symptomatic patients as well", Biswa Sarma said.

WHAT IS COMMUNITY TRANSMISSION?

World Health Organisation (WHO) describes community transmission "as the inability to relate confirmed cases through chains of transmission for a large number of cases, or by increasing positive tests through sentinel samples (routine systematic testing of respiratory samples from established laboratories)". In simpler terms, community transmission is said to be taking place when the source of the contagion is not known. When one is unable to trace an infection back to a carrier who has traveled in an affected area, or through contact with a person who has the disease, the community transmission phase is said to have begun.

Although the Indian Health Ministry says that the country has not reached that phase yet, experts suggest that in some parts of India, such transmission has already begun.

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