Experts hint at community transmission, BMC denies claim

With the city witnessing a rapid rise in Covid-19 cases every day, the question that is repeatedly being asked is: Has the community transmission begun in Mumbai?

With the city witnessing a rapid rise in Covid-19 cases every day, the question that is repeatedly being asked is: Has the community transmission begun in Mumbai? While experts say there is a possibility of the community transmission, civic officials have outrightly denied the same.

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Majority of the city’s Covid-19 cases have come from certain areas - Worli-Prabhadevi, Dharavi, Govandi, Kurla and Byculla. While the count in Worli-Prabhadevi could be reaching 1,000, Dharavi has crossed 700 cases.

Dr Shashikant Ahankari, a community health specialist, said that there is a thin line between local and community spread of coronavirus. “The community spread of the virus has already started, but don’t know why the authorities are denying it. In the last 15 days, several people have tested positive for the virus without any travel or any contact history. “ BMC has estimated 75,000 coronavirus cases, which indicates the community spread,” said Ahankari.

“If there is no community spread in Mumbai then authorities should tell why Covid-19 cases [with no travel or contact history] are increasing daily, specifically in Dharavi?”, he said.

A document detailing a three-pronged surveillance strategy, to screen people for possible Covid-19 symptoms, drafted by the BMC on May 4, 2020, also states that the community spread is limited since only 238 out of 11,591 who were tested in fever clinics were found positive.

However, municipal commissioner Praveen Pardeshi said, “There is no community spread of disease in our city. Our rate of detection of cases through fever clinics is very less, which is a good sign for the city.”

Dr Daksha Shah, deputy director, health department BMC said surveillance regarding the community spread is being conducted by the experts from the ICMR. “To declare community spread of disease is not under our jurisdiction. As of now, we have not any such information about the community spread of disease in the city.”

There are four main stages of the disease outbreak. Stage one is usually when cases are imported and are not of local origin. Stage two is when there is a local transmission, which means a section of people testing positive has come in contact with a positive patient having a travel history. Stage three is community transmission and stage four is an epidemic when there are several clusters of the infection.

Anticipating the future outbreak of the coronavirus, BMC is ramping up healthcare infrastructure.

Elaborating strategy further, the document states that the BMC has divided Covid-19 patients under the symptomatic and asymptomatic category. All symptomatic patients will be sent to dedicated Covid-19 hospitals. The civic body has arranged 7,500 beds. 5,000 more beds are identified from different private hospitals.

As of now more the than 25,000 isolation beds already in place at hotels, lodges, marriage halls and sports complexes. In a view to upgrade bed capacity, the civic body has identified more than 350 municipal schools to create additional capacity of 35,000 beds.