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Indian Medical Association rubbishes reports of community transmission of COVID-19

According to the Union Health Ministry at 8 AM on Monday, there have been 11,18,043 confirmed cases across India, of which 3,90,459 are active cases. 

  • IMA in an official statement on its stand on community transmission of COVID-19 said, "It is for the official agencies to ascertain this stage in the natural history of the epidemic."
  • They stated that crowd sourcing data can not replace authentic data.
  • IMA said the data shows that the clusters are in urban metros and not in the countryside where open spaces are the rule.

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Indian Medical Association rubbishes reports of community transmission of COVID-19 File Photo (Reuters)

New Delhi: The Indian Medical Association (IMA) on Monday (July 20, 2020) rubbished the reports doing rounds on social media that the community transmission of COVID-19 has started in India and said that the "purported statement is not from IMA HQs".

IMA in an official statement on its stand on community transmission of COVID-19 said, "It is for the official agencies to ascertain this stage in the natural history of the epidemic. Crowd sourcing data can not replace authentic data."

They said that all presumptions in this regard should be considered a matter of personal opinion.

"IMA is confident that the public health authorities and the medical fraternity are fully engaged and prepared in containing the fallout," read the statement.

IMA said the data shows that the clusters are in urban metros and not in the countryside where open spaces are the rule.

The official statement comes after the ANI news agency on July 18 had quoted Dr VK Monga, the Chairman of IMA Hospital Board of India saying, "This is now an exponential growth. Every day the number of cases is increasing by more than around 30,000. This is really a bad situation for the country. There are so many factors connected with it but overall this is now spreading to rural areas. This is a bad sign. It now shows a community spread."

Earlier in the day, Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain was quoted by the ANI news agency saying, "There is spread in the community, now it's very technical to say either it's local or community spread. Source of many COVID-19 positive patients remains unknown after test. Let's leave the technical battle on Center to decide over community spread."

According to the Union Health Ministry at 8 AM on Monday, there have been 11,18,043 confirmed cases across India, of which 3,90,459 are active cases. A total of 27,497 people have succumbed to the virus so far.