As India registered a record jump of 4,213 COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, the government on Monday said some relatively large outbreaks have been noticed in particular locations and it is important to focus on containment efforts to ensure that the country does not reach the community transmission stage.
The government also said the coronavirus tracking app Aarogya Setu is secure as it was designed keeping in mind privacy of people and is playing a crucial role in India's fight against COVID-19.
Asked if there has been community transmission of COVID-19 in India, joint secretary in the health ministry Lav Agarwal at a press briefing said, "Some clusters have been found here (in the country), and in some cases in some particular locations relatively large outbreaks have also been noticed."
"And in this context if you remember even AIIMS Director (Dr Randeep Guleria) had said that if these are not contained properly, the transmission rate would become higher. So, it is important for us now to focus on containment efforts and ensure that we do not reach the stage of community transmission, he said.
Agarwal said 4,213 COVID-19 cases and 97 deaths have been reported in the last 24 hrs till Monday 8 am, taking the total cases to 67,152 and death toll to 2,206.
As many as 20,917 COVID-19 patients have been cured till now, taking the recovery rate to 31.15 per cent. Also 1,559 patients have recovered in the last 24 hours, the highest number of recoveries in one day, the ministry said.
Agarwal insisted on fighting the stigma associated with COVID-19 and said people who develop coronavirus symptoms should not hide them and come forward to report so that they get timely treatment and don't spread the infection to their family members and others.
Asked about certain media reports claiming that the government is mulling religion based mapping of hotspots, Agarwal said it is a very irresponsible, baseless and incorrect news.
"It is a very irresponsible news. Even the Supreme Court has already said that no fake news should be published, and any news should be published after checking facts," Agarwal said.
"I appeal to everyone not to encourage non-factual news," he said, asserting that the spread of COVID-19 has nothing to do with race, religion, area and spreads due to lack of precautions and when dos and don'ts are not followed.
Agarwal said the government's focus is on identifyingcpockets which have been reporting a larger number of cases so that strong containment measures can be implemented.
In response to a question, he informed that the specificity (true negative rate identification) of the indigenously developed antibody detection ELISA test kit for COVID-19 is 97 per cent and sensitivity is 92 per cent.
The National Institute of Virology (NIV) in Pune has developed the detection kit that will play a critical role in surveillance of proportion of population exposed to the infection, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan had said on Sunday.
The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) recently cancelled orders for about half a million COVID-19 rapid antibody test kits from China after they were found to be giving inaccurate results.
The testing technique is used to detect antibodies in the blood of people who may have had the coronavirus infection.
The Department of Biotechnology and Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council COVID-19 research consortium has recommended 70 proposals for funding vaccines, diagnostics, therapeutics and other technologies, Agarwal said.
To a question on whether centralised air conditioning can be used as the Railways will start operating AC trains from Tuesday and there would be no danger of transmission, he said, "Centralised AC can be used but then the flow of air has to be monitored while it is being used.
It's important to note that if any aerosol generated issue is being felt, as a precautionary measure we can travel without using the centralised AC," he said.
On the revised discharge policy for COVID-19 stating that very mild, mild and moderate patients can be discharged without test, subject to clinical conditions, Agarwal said the revised criterion specifies that such patients after discharge will follow home isolation for a further seven days.
The policy was revised because several countries have changed their discharge criteria from test-based strategy to symptom-based strategy or time-based strategy', he said.
"A review of ICMR laboratory surveillance data also indicated that after initial RT-PCR positive results, patients became negative after a median duration of 10 days," Agarwal said.
"Recent studies have also suggested that the viral load peaks in the pre-symptomatic period (two days before symptoms) and goes down over the next seven days," he said.
The official said the discharge policy is not meant for home or facility quarantine patients.
Ajay Sawhney, Chairman, Empowered Group 9, which deals with technology and data management, said the Aarogya Setu app has been developed to alert people before they come in contact with infected patients and to alert the health system.
Around 9.8 crore people have downloaded the app and it is available in 12 languages, he said.
Information about 697 potential COVID-19 hotspots was generated through the app and it is secure,used only for health interventions and does not reveal identity of people, he said.
Around 1.4 lakh Aarogya Setu users have been alerted via bluetooth contact tracing about possible risk of infection due to proximity to infected patients, Sawhney said.
The app will soon reach a user base of 10 crore. It has created a world record in being the fastest app to reach five crore users, he said.
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