What Are The Different Stages Of COVID-19 Transmission, Experts Explain

New Delhi: With the 21-day nationwide lockdown completing a week, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) has claimed that the move has fetched positive results and has prevented India from entering ‘community transmission’ stage. As per the World Health Organization, there are four stages of the pandemic novel coronavirus outbreak around the globe. 

At present, the government says India is still on Stage 2, when there is local transmission from infected persons. Several health experts have stressed that India will be in a very tough spot if the COVID-19 transmission enters the third stage of outbreak in the country. Let’s take a look at what are these four stages of transmission are.

Stage 1 is when cases are imported from affected countries. In this stage, the virus doesn’t spread locally – cases reported are usually due to the people who have A travel history to an affected country. Stage one sees only these test positive.

When it comes to stage two, the virus could be transmitted through contact with affected people. Here, people who have brought the virus into the country transmit it to people they come in contact with, usually friends and family.

The source of the virus in the second stage is known and it is easier to trace the chain and quarantine people, as opposed to community transmission, he said.

In local transmission, less people are affected as compared to the stage three, community transmission, Luv Agarwal from Indian Council of Medical Research said.

The third stage, community transmission, is when the source of the virus is untraceable; this stage is identified when people who haven’t had travel history to affected place, get diagnosed with the virus, explains the MPMC expert..

Once we reach the community transmission stage, spread is extremely contagious and difficult to control, hence is a matter of concern for India, a country of 1.3 billion people, he added.

Stage four for a pandemic occurs when the spread of the virus goes out of control and there are many major clusters of infection all over the country.

Until now, only China has faced the wrath of the stage four of the novel coronavirus outbreak, MPMC expert explained.

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