Control keys

While India has not reached the community transmission stage of Covid-19 yet, it needs to bolster its public health system, improve lab facilities and ensure individual compliance to safety measures in order to curb its spread

- NAMITA KOHLI

It is a war. And somewhere, the world forgot to be battle-ready. Slowly though, it is realising that one of the biggest threats to its people and economy is from a virus that cannot be seen without a microscope that has a resolution power of over a hundred thousand. With several drugs and a vaccine still at the experimental stage, caution is the only weapon against SARSCoV-2 (the most recent strain of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus) that has infected more than 17 lakh people and killed more than 7,000. Measures like isolation, quarantine, social distancing, hand hygiene and respiratory etiquettes are the only hope.

India though had a slow start, with just three patients, even as countries such as China, Italy, South Korea and Iran struggle with the deluge of Covid-19 patients. But the lull did not last long, as cases began to surge in the first week of March. As on March 18, India has reported three deaths and 134 active cases, with 14 patients discharged. Since the uptick in cases, several measures have been taken to quarantine India from the world, including cancelling visas and stopping all traffic from the United Kingdom and European countries. Within the country, too, several states are at different stages of lockdown. But, will India see a surge in the epidemiological curve?

“We are still at stage 2 (local transmission from infected persons) of the disease. And there is no evidence of community transmission [Stage 3] yet,” said Dr Balram Bhargava, director general, Indian Council of Medical Research. Besides the testing of samples at 121 laboratories across the country, he said a study with 1,000 samples was currently evaluating the possibility of community transmission of the disease. On March 17, Bhargava said that private diagnostic labs, too, would be roped in to test samples.