Mumbai: Fruit vendors sort Alphanso mangoes on his shop at Crawford market during a nationwide lockdown in the wake of coronavirus pandemic in Mumbai, Monday, March 30, 2020.
India has not yet entered stage 3 of coronavirus which pertains to community transmission, the Health Ministry clarified on Monday. At least 92 cases and four deaths have been reported in India in the last 24 hours. "India is still in the local transmission stage, if it reaches the community transmission stage, the Health Ministry will admit it but the country is not there yet."
What is community transmission
During Stage 3 or the community transmission stage, a disease spreads in the population in a way that people do not know how they were exposed to the contagion: they haven't traveled to a country that is fighting the outbreak, or haven't been in contact with someone they know has the disease.
Elaborating on stage 3, an official of the health ministry said: "We can consider that we are in the community transmission stage only when there are about 20 to 30 percent cases with no clue on how they got the virus. If India enters that stage, we will not hide it. We will tell people so that we can step up the level of alertness and awareness."
Before a lockdown was imposed in India, the ICMR had said more than 800 random samples tested to detect community transmission had come out negative.
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