Local community transmission is happening in hotspot areas, says AIIMS Director

Refuting the claim of IMA that community transmission in India has begun, AIIMS director Dr Randeep Guleria said that there is no such evidence of community transmission at a national level but admitted that local community transmission of coronavirus is happening in many hotspot areas across the nation.

New Delhi: Days after Indian Medical Association (IMA) said that community transmission in India has entered into the initial stage, All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS) Director Dr Randeep Guleria on Monday claimed that there is no such evidence of community transmission at a national level.

Guleria, however, admitted that a local community transmission of COVID-19 is happening in several hotspot areas across the nation.

"There is not much evidence to ascertain community transmission in India. The nationwide data also does not give any indication of a national level community transmission. The serosurveillance data of Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has also denied community transmission at a national level. There are many states which are witnessing very minimum cases. In such circumstances it will not be appropriate to say that community transmission has begun in India," said Dr Guleria.

He said that there are hotspots even in cities where there is a spike of cases, and it is very likely that local community transmission in those areas is happening. "And that is why we kept saying that there is aggressive action needed in containment zones. Door to door health survey is required," said Dr Guleria.

Read:|COVID-19 news from across the nation

The IMA on Saturday has claimed that some pockets in India have started registering community transmission.

Meanwhile, AIIMS in Delhi on Monday has started the human trial of COVID-19 drugs COVAXIN.

Referring to the human trial of COVAXIN, Dr Guleria said that phase 1 of vaccine trial will be done on healthy people aged between 18 to 55 years who have no co-morbidity.

"A total 1,125 samples have been collected of which 375 will be studied in the first phase and in the second phase 750 people will be recruited between 12 to 65 years of people," said Dr Guleria.

In Patna (Bihar) and Rohtak (Haryana), the human trial of COVAXIN has already started.

Dr Guleria said that indigenous vaccine for COVID-19, COVAXIN will be one of the biggest achievements of India. He said that the trial result may come in next 2 to 3 months.

Meanwhile, India has recorded the highest ever spike of COVID-19 cases in a single day with as many as 40,425 cases registered from across the nation. A total of 681 deaths also took place during the same period.

With this the total number of COVID-19 positive cases in India now stands at 11,18,043 including 3,90,459 active cases, 7,00,087 cured and 27,497 deaths.

Health Ministry statistics show that more than 7 lakh people have been recovered in India till date taking the recovery rate to 62.62 per cent. India's case-fatality rate also dropped to 2.46 per cent.

Significantly, Delhi AIIMS has supported 43 big hospitals in 11 states including Mumbai, Goa, Delhi, Gujarat, Telangana, Assam, Karnataka, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Tamil Nadu through shared experiences and technical advice from domain experts in the clinical management of ICU patients.

Read:|COVID-19 spread may spike in monsoon, winter with fall in temperatures: IIT-AIIMS study