COVID-19: India Fights To Delay Community Transmission, Kolkata Teen Gives Wake-Up Call

The case of the 18-year-old son of a West Bengal bureaucrat who defied medical advice on arrival into the country from UK, moved freely for 2 days, only to be tested positive for COVID-19 later, is yet another wake-up call to the system. The Oxford student travelled from London to Delhi and then to Kolkata (the government is now reportedly scrambling to get details of fellow-passengers on these flights). He reportedly did not show any symptoms of COVID-19 on arrival, but was advised testing and self-isolation.

Ignoring the advice of doctors, the young man is said to have refused to get himself admitted in the nodal Hospital in Kolkata. He went to a second hospital but did not go into self-isolation.

The senior bureaucrat's son, who was advised hospitalisation on Monday itself, according to media reports, went to 4 to 5 places, while his mother attended meetings in the high profile building of the state secretariat. After his test results were out confirming Coronavirus, a number of bureaucrats have had to go into self-isolation, media reports said. The second major challenge is large-scale contact tracing down to the last person he would have come in contact with.

A furious Mamata Banerjee hit out at the underlying VIP culture in the case which gives people a sense of entitlement. She asked those coming from other countries to get themselves tested. They should follow WHO protocol and remain in isolation, the West Bengal chief Minister said.

The other such case is that of a cluster of 6 patients in Agra early on and now the Indonesian religious leader who along with 6 others has tested positive for Coronavirus in Telangana. He had reportedly come here for a religious gathering. These and several other cases highlight the fragility of the Indian system and pose similar challenges.

Is ICMR's random testing enough?

Do our numbers match the reality on the ground is a question being asked by many.

In view of our high population levels, are the numbers being taken up for random testing by Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) enough? Simply put, are we testing enough?

Perhaps, despite its reluctance to do so, the ICMR should consider, along with other agencies, random testing on a much larger scale following the South Korean model.

According to experts the only way to determine if India has touched stage III or the phase of community transmission is by scaling up the number of tests. Of the 1020 samples taken up for random testing by the ICMR, 500 have returned negative. This in itself, is a good sign but it may not be enough to detect community transmission in an early stage, unless we test many more, say some experts.