Dr Prajjwal Pyakurel
Elucidation of the chain of disease transmission and identification are crucial for effective disease containment for COVID-19. There is widespread buzz in the media that the country has entered the phase of community transmission. However, the robust scientific evidence is still lacking. Just interpreting it as a community transmission without full proven evidence couldn’t be justified. So, when we say it as a community transmission? Community transmission is when there is no clear source of origin of infection in a new hamlet.
World Health Organization has clearly mentioned that countries/ area and territories experiencing large sundering of local transmissible through an assessment of different components but not limited to 1) Large number of cases not linkable to transmission chain 2) Large number of cases from sentinal lab surveillance and 3) Multiple unrelated cluster in several areas of the country/territory/area. Community transmission should be assessed by analyzing the local epidemiological data.
The local government in different provinces should be electric and agile enough to understand the situation in their local context and mobilize the expertise and resources as needed. If there is verification of community transmission through epidemiological data description and spooring of individual cases,identification should no longer be prerogative.
The expertise and resources should be mobilized on monitoring the vein of the virus, identify and fondle severe cases, preventing forth transmission of the virus, mollifywrench on health care services, inform the public and reduce social and economic impact of the disease. The three tier of health system of Government of Nepal should equally be responsible and should have coordinate plan to handle such situation if arises in the future.
(Dr Pyakurel is Assistant Professor at B.P. Koirala Institute of Health Sciences, Dharan)
