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Introduction of community transmission of Covid-19 likely in India: ICMR

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NEW DELHI: The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on Monday warned that introduction of a community transmission of Covid-19 cases may take anywhere from a minimum of 20 days to a few months to be visible, reports LiveMint.

In a mathematical modelling study published on Monday in the Indian Journal of Medical Research, the ICMR has highlighted that the control of epidemic would be difficult in “pessimist” scenarios in metropolitan cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad and Kochi, if people who have a travel history to infected countries or contact with the infect don’t isolate themselves.

The study results showed that symptomatic quarantine would identify and quarantine 50% of symptomatic individuals within three days of developing symptoms. In an optimistic scenario of the basic reproduction number (R0) being 1.5, and asymptomatic infections lacking any infectiousness, such measures would reduce the cumulative incidence by 62%, the study said. Reproduction number of an infection can be thought of as the expected number of cases directly generated by one case in a population where all individuals are susceptible to infection.

“In the pessimistic scenario of R0 =4, and asymptomatic infections being half as infectious as symptomatic, this projected impact falls to two per cent,” the study warned adding that port-of-entry-based entry screening of travellers with suggestive clinical features and from Covid-19-affected countries, would achieve modest delays in the introduction of the virus into the community.

 

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