Community transmission not at national level, says AIIMS Director Randeep Guleria

Randeep Guleria, director, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) New Delhi says that there is not much evidence of community transmission of COVID 19, however there are certain areas that there will be peek in the cases. He says "There are hotspots, even in cities where there is spike of cases and it very likely that local community transmission in those areas is happening". There are certain areas that have hit the peak in terms of the cases that were recorded . Delhi have reached its peak as the cases have declined significantly. However according to Dr Guleria, there are certain other areas to reach the peak as cases seems to be increasing in that area.

However according to Dr MC Misra, former director of AIIMS , Community Transmission is happening in India and he is perplexed that why the government is saying otherwise. "Interim data for a study conducted by ICMR in May, which hasn't been published yet, shows that 15-30 percent people are infected and these people can't tell where they got the infection from which suggests that community transmission is happening," says Dr Misra.

According to him community transmission at small scale started happening in March itself when around 200 passengers who visited Punjab were found infected and their source could not be traced . According to him Tablighi Jamaat incident was the beginning of community transmission on large scale and they spread across 17 states without getting themselves tested. Dr Mishra said that the peak is yet to come and number of available beds is not enough when there are not enough health care staff to supervise them. According to a report around 479 health care workers at AIIMS Delhi have also been tested positive.

Should Read- Coronavirus Updates new Cases & Recovery: Tracker

• Corona status of Delhi is as follow- 1,03,134 patients recovered from 1,22,793 and a total 3,628 infected people have lost their lives. In last 24 hours national capital recorded 1,211 fresh cases.

There is not much evidence that there is community transmission happening at national level. But there are hotspots, even in cities where there is spike of cases & it very likely that local community transmission in those areas is happening: AIIMS Director Randeep Guleria pic.twitter.com/nC5QH3W6P7

— ANI (@ANI) July 20, 2020

Dr Guleria says that mortality rate in Southeast Asia ,not just India is much lower than that in Italy, Spain and United States due to high population of youngsters.Total cases of COVID-19 crossed 11 lakh while the total recovered patients are over seven lakh, AIIMS .