India Is Now In Stage 2 Of COVID-19, Local Transmission, Working On More Testing Centers

On Tuesday, during a press conference in Delhi, Director-General Balram Bhargava of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) spoke about COVID-19 in India. According to Bhargava, the country is currently in the second stager of commission, called local transmission. He added that there’s no sign of the third stage, community transmission.

Local transmission is when a person is infected with COVID-19, we can trace the one that passed on the infection. The person passing on the virus could be a friend or a family member that came back from a foreign country where they were most likely infected. The process of tracing the infection is contact tracing, which is useful for understanding and even stopping the spread of the pandemic.

Bhargava said that as of now, it’s clear that India is in the second stage, not stage three, and that he hoped the country won’t come to the third stage. However, that depends a lot on strongly closing international borders and the government has been proactive in this action. But there’s no certainty that the third stage will not happen.

In addition, he said that lock-down is necessary, the country has 30 days to stop the beginning of the third stage of COVID-19. And we have to act now.

The four stages of the coronavirus pandemic

Stage 1 is called imported cases. This is when people returning to India from foreign countries that have had COVID-19 cases.

Stage 2 is called local transmission. At this stage, people get infected from cases in the first stage.

Stage 3 is called community transmission. When the country comes to this stage, it’s impossible to trace and figure out when a person gets the infection from.

Stage 4 is called epidemic. If you have seen how the coronavirus outbreak peaked in China and how the country struggled, you have seen the epidemic.

ICMR is working with private labs

ICMR has called on private laboratories to start giving tests for COVID-19, giving them guidelines. Besides, the research institute asked these labs to consider providing free tests.

Bhargava said that that institute is in talks with high-quality private labs accredited by NABL to understand the modalities of preparing more coronavirus tests for the future.

More testing centers

ICMR will start two quick testing labs along with another 49 testing centers by week-end. Currently, there are 72 testing centers across India. The quick testing labs will be able to test up to 1,400 samples per day. They will be located in Bhubaneswar and Delhi-NCR to add quick testing for the coronavirus.

The additional testing centers will be set up at medical colleges among other places, including the Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO), Department of Biotechnology (DBT), and the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).

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