With India registering 3,320 new COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, taking the overall tally as reported by State Health Departments to 62,584, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on Saturday said it will initiate a study in the worst-affected 75 hotspot districts to check for community transmission.
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In a separate development, the Health Ministry announced that it will deploy central teams to 10 States witnessing high case load and spurt in cases.
“The teams are being sent to Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh,Punjab,West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. This is besides the 20 central teams of public health experts earlier sent to the high case load districts.
A high-level team had recently been deputed to Mumbai to support the State’s efforts,” the Ministry said.
“The teams will support State health departments in containment measures,” it added.
An ICMR official said the study on community transmission was scheduled for the first week of April but had “subsequently got derailed”. “We had drawn up places based on hotspots, which being dynamic have changed; a final list will be announced soon,” he said.
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“But we will go into 75 districts to find the spread, if any, and extent of community spread,” said a senior ICMR official. Community transmission is said to have taken place where tracing the source of infection is not possible, he said.
The ICMR, which was supposed to use the rapid antibody test kits for the survey, will now use the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) test — used in HIV detection — for the survey.
On Saturday, the country registered 95 more deaths taking the total COVID-19 fatalities to 1,981; 17,847 per