New Delhi: Terming the current COVID-19 situation of India as 'pretty bad', the Indian Medical Association (IMA) on Saturday said that community transmission of Covid-19 disease has started in India.
Talking to ETV Bharat, Dr Rajan Sharma, IMA president said that the community transmission has started in particular pockets across the country.
"This has been ascertained following the fact that the everyday number of positive cases are increasing. The more we conduct testing, there will be more positive cases," Dr Sharma told ETV Bharat.
Indicating that that states with the maximum caseload, might witness community transmission in several pockets, he said that states like Maharashtra, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh have been witnessing a spike in COVID positive cases.
Interestingly, the Union Health Ministry has also assigned a multidisciplinary central team to visit Bihar on Sunday.
It is to be noted that the Union Health Ministry has not accepted such claim of community transmission of the disease in India.
At a time, when India has been registering almost 35,000 COVID positive cases on every alternate day, records indicate that more than 15,000 frontline workers and health care staff have been infected by the lethal disease so far across India.
Interestingly, the maximum number of cases were recorded in the month of June and July, during which a majority of healthcare workers were infected.
Citing a study published in the Indian Journal of Medical Research (IJMR) in May that mentioned around 1073 cases have been confirmed among healthcare workers till May, Officials in IMA said that substandard PPE kits, insufficient protective gear are the major reason because of which healthcare workers are getting infected by Covid-19.
Stating that IMA is doing an in-house study with a new design for PPE kits, IMA President has told ETV Bharat that the association will submit their design to the Health Ministry very soon.
Meanwhile, Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan has said that India has built a good infrastructure to fight against Covid-19 pandemic.
"From just one Covid19 testing lab at NIV Pune, India now has 1250 labs as of now. The country tests on an average 3.3 lakhs COVID suspects every day and will simplify the capacity to test one million people within the next 12 weeks," said Dr Vardhan.
He said that India has also recorded an improving recovery rate of 63.33 per cent, one of the world's highest and reducing the mortality rate to 2.55 per cent, one of the lowest in the world.
Also read: COVID: 31.6 lakh people in quarantine across India, UP has the highest number
