VIJAYAWADA: West Godavari district, which had not reported any case of COVID-19 till Tuesday, received a shock on Wednesday when 14 people, all of whom participated in the Tablighi Jamaat meeting in New Delhi, tested positive for coronavirus. With most cases being from Eluru and Bhimavaram municipalities, the district administration appealed to the public to observe a complete lockdown.
What was more worrying was that all who tested positive were asymptomatic (showing no symptoms). With this, joint collector-II Tej Bharat made a public appeal, asking for all those who travelled to the Nizamuddin religious congregation to report themselves to the district administration.
"Except one person, who had typhoid, none of the 30 persons we identified to have returned from Delhi had symptoms. However, we sent all samples from all of them for testing. All those who tested positive had attended the Tablighi Jamaat in New Delhi. It’s important to note that all of them were asymptomatic," Bharat said.
The joint collector also warned that asymptomatic transmission would be tough to manage as tests would not be conducted.
Asymptomatic transmission occurs when an infected person with no symptoms passes the infection to others. "Since we don’t often test those with no symptoms, asymptomatic transmission would be tough to manage," he said.
No need to press the panic button as of now: Official
Tej Bharat also noted that the tests done on those who travelled in the same train as the jamaat returnees emerged negative. "This means, the positive cases must have contracted it at the religious meeting," he observed. However, he added that physical distancing and taking preventive measures would help in avoiding contraction of the virus.
Usage of preventive equipment like masks, gloves and others has once again become a point of debate the world over as public health institutions like USA’s Center for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC) "aggressively reviewing" its recommendation regarding masks. The director of CDC, Dr Robert Redfield, revealed the same to a US-based public radio, WABE, after estimating that about 25 percent of Covid-19 cases could be asymptomatic.
Another research quoted by the New York Times noted that about 18 percent of people infected with the virus on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which the Japanese authorities docked for two weeks at Yokohama port as one of its former passengers tested positive for the virus, never developed symptoms.
The State officials, who have been only doing targeted tests, have also geared up after asymptomatic cases emerged in the state. Targeted testing involves testing those who exhibit symptoms or are from affected clusters.
Even as social media is gripped with a debate on whether AP has lower numbers because it is testing fewer people, an official involved in the state-level monitoring activity allayed the fears and said, "Since the virus has come to our state from outside, it is not necessary to take up mass testing drives. Effectively following preventive steps would help in containing the pandemic.
That is the reason, we are recommending usage of personal protective equipment. Our volunteers, who are tracing the people with travel history to affected clusters, are also using PPE. Moreover, the percentage of positive cases, at least so far, among those who returned from New Delhi and abroad is 12 per cent and less than 3 per cent respectively. So, there is no need to press the panic button."