A 33-year-old resident of Pilibhit, Uttar Pradesh has been tested positive for COVID-19. As per reports, the person does not have any travel history from abroad. Dr. Sudhir Singh of King George Medical University, Lucknow said it is a confirmed case of contact transmission.
https://twitter.com/ANINewsUP/status/1242665895622631426?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwEarlier, a 45-year-old woman who had travelled to Mecca with a group of 37 people recently, had tested positive. Uttar Pradesh has reported 34 positive cases so far.
In India, community transmission has not been reported so far. Most cases in India are people who had contracted the disease from abroad or their immediate family members. The ICMR had already confirmed earlier that in India, coronavirus is at Stage 2, which means local transmission.
In Maharashtra, 87 people had been put under quarantine after an Anganwadi worker was tested positive. The said worker’s family members were also tested positive.
Pilibhit was recently in the news when, despite government orders restricting gatherings, police officers were seen leading a procession of people applauding healthcare workers at 5 pm on Sunday, 22 March.
COVID-19 is the infectious disease caused by the recent Coronavirus outbreak started in the Wuhan province of China in December 2019. The novel coronavirus was identified as a cause of the cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan. It rapidly spread, resulting in an epidemic throughout China followed by an increasing number of cases throughout the world. Globally more than 300,000 confirmed cases have been reported.
As per WHO, the initial transmission was associated with a seafood market where most patients used to work that sold live animals. Later the market was closed to avoid infection. However, the transmission progressed from person to person, which became the main mode of transmission. The person to person transmission has occurred mainly via respiratory droplets. The symptoms of COVID-19 may have aches and pains, nasal congestion, runny nose, sore throat, and diarrhoea.
In India, total number of cases of coronavirus has reached near 520 and 11 patients succumbed to the disease. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday in an emotional gesture with folded hands requested the citizens to avoid stepping out of the homes till the next 21 days calling for a complete lockdown across the country.
He asserted that “If we don’t handle these 21 days well, then our country will go backwards by 21 years.” Quoting WHO PM said that the virus took 67 days from first reported case to reach 100,000 cases, it took 11 days from 100,000 cases to reach next 100,000 cases and took only 4 days to reach third 100,000 explaining the scale of the epidemic in order to make realize the citizens to stay home for avoiding the deadly epidemic.