At the backdrop of rising counts of daily Covid additions and deaths in the country, the Group of Ministers (GoM) meeting on Covid-19 in the national capital on Thursday was keenly observed. This particular edition, which has become a monthly affair now since the pandemic made footfalls in India had a comparative greater significance than the earlier ones since the nation was looking for a clarification over a very vital issue, perhaps the most important one in the fast-changing Covid scenario i.e. community transmission. The meeting has reaffirmed that there is no such thing currently in the country and nothing can be more assuring if it is so. But, it’s for sure that there will be wide differences of opinion over the coming days and the raging debate will get a renewed vigour. The root of this ambiguity actually lies in the fact that even after 6 months of existence of coronavirus, there is still no comprehensive definition of the term ‘community transmission’ by the apex global health watchdog, the WHO. This has given much leeway to go for self-assessment by the respective nations, which in the long run is causing a fundamental flaw to remain unattended.
In common language, the term community transmission is generally understood and accepted by the medical fraternity as the stage during escalation of the Covid pandemic when someone who gets the virus has no known contact with another confirmed case or has no travel history from a country badly affected by the pandemic which actually means the virus is moving freely in the community concerned. Also, in other words for a little elaboration, community transmission is said to be taking place when the source of the contagion is beyond any scope of detection and it is that troubling stage when any individual can be infected, irrespective of whether he or she has a travel history to or has come in contact with an affected person. But, it is of the opinion of most virologists and medical experts that WHO’s elaboration so far has been too broad and vague, which is not allowing the response pattern to be on that level which will conform to the ground realities. It should be taken into account that the protocols for facing the stage of community transmission are quite different from the present one, which are being pursued, entirely based on a kind of assumption rather that there is no such extreme danger.
Time is running out and it’s high time for WHO to come out with a more clearer definition of community transmission, so that countries like India where a very high-density population is always a ‘fertile’ ground for its occurrence can take more result-oriented guards. 

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Kenter Joya Riba

(Managing Editor)
      She is a graduate in Science with post graduation in Sociology from University of Pune. She has been in the media industry for nearly a decade. Before turning to print business, she has been associated with radio and television.
Email: kenterjoyaz@easternsentinel.in / editoreasternsentinel@gmail.com
Phone: 0360-2212313

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