NEW DELHI: India now has 17 districts that have not reported a single new COVID-19 case in the last 28 days. The Union government shared this piece of information as “good news” on Tuesday as these districts are those that had reported cases of novel coronavirus earlier.
The period of 28 days is significant because it indicates that after two cycles of incubation of the virus, zero reports of fresh cases could mean that the chain of transmission has been broken in the area.
But is this really an achievement?
A closer look at all these districts reveals that most of these districts that have been projected as a sign of the government’s success in dealing with the public health crisis had just one or two sporadic cases, mostly imported ones, that were quickly identified and therefore contained.
The only exceptions in the list are two districts, Kalimpong in West Bengal and Wayanad in Kerala. While Kalimpong had 11 cases -- nine of which were from the same family -- Kerala had three patients, but in these districts too the numbers were not high.
The other districts in the list include Durg, Bilaspur and Rajnandgaon in Chhattisgarh, South Goa, Chitradurga, Devangere and Kodagu in Karnataka, Shivpuri in Madhya Pradesh, Gondia in Maharashtra, Imphal West in Manipur, Mahe in Puducherry, Pratapgarh in Rajasthan, Bhadradari Kothamgedum in Telangana and Pauri Garhwal in Uttarakhand.
A piece of not so good news, which the government has not made public, on the other hand, is that as on Friday, there are now as many as 430 districts in the country that have recorded at least one COVID-19 case. Exactly a month back on March 28, this number was only 129.
Even more worrying is the fact that in hotspot districts -- there are at least 170 of them across India with a significant outbreak of the disease -- cases are only spiraling up signalling that in areas where mega clusters have emerged or community transmission has happened, the government is struggling to curb the outbreak.
Public health specialists pointed out that the government may be tomtomming the “inconsequential data" while holding back the information that is "most crucial.”
Dr Sanjay K Rai, president of Indian Association of Public Health who teaches community medicine at AIIMS, Delhi said that while every district which has managed to find its way into the green zone needs a pat on the back for ‘nipping it in the bud’, it does not call for a big celebration because these were “easy areas to begin with”.
“It's only when the number of cases is huge and a tremendous surveillance effort involving contact tracing and isolation exercise is required that the government’s response is put to test,” he said.
“This kind of claim only serves to distract and is largely useless,” said Dr T Sundararaman, community medicine expert and former director of the National Health Systems Resource Centre under the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. “There should be credit only where it is due. The government should rather tell us how many hotspot districts have they managed to move from red to orange or green zone.”