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The Health Ministry on Tuesday said that the chain of transmission of the deadly coronavirus will be considered broken only when no new case is reported in an area for at least 28 days.
"Our major effort is to see how to break the chain of transmission. If no new case is reported in an area for 28 days, the last case comes negative, then we believe that chain of transmission has broken there and no new cases are coming," Lav Agarwal, Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Health, was quoted as saying by ANI. Under this, we are promoting the concept of behavioural change in terms of social distancing to break the chain of transmission, he said.
India has recorded at least 1463 cases in the last 24 hours and 29 deaths, which is the sharpest ever increase in India. With this, India's total tally has soared to 10,815. This includes 9272 cases, 1190 cured/discharged/migrated people and 353 deaths.
The 28-day period has originated from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare's containment plan. According to this, the containment plan would only be scaled down if no Covid-19 case confirmed by a secondary laboratory is reported from the geographic quarantine zone for at least four weeks after the last confirmed case has been isolated and all his contacts have been traced for up to 28 days.
"The containment operation shall be deemed to be over 28 days from the discharge of the last confirmed case (following negative test as per the discharge policy) from the designated health facility, i.e., when the follow up of hospital contacts will be complete," said the ministry in a strategy document.
The Cluster Containment Strategy would be to contain the disease within a defined geographical area by early detection of cases and breaking the chain of transmission.
(With IANS inputs)
