A COVID-19 infected person not following any social distancing measure can spread it to as many as 406 people in 30 days, said Health Ministry spokesperson Lav Agarwal on Thursday. He was quoting a study conducted at a stem cell research laboratory in the United States’ University of California San Diego.
The projections have been made by a team led by scientist Robert A.J. Signer, according to which 75% reduction in social exposure could restrict the spread to just 2.5 people in 30 days.
Quoting a media report on a survey involving 2,000 respondents across 25 cities, Mr. Agarwal said 50% people did not wear a mask and of them, 64% covered mouth but not nose, while 20% wore mask on chin and 2% on neck. Only 14% wore mask correctly, covering nose, mouth, chin and with a clip on the nose, he said urging the people to follow social distancing guidelines diligently.
Mr. Agarwal said even a single case had the potential of triggering further spread of infection if necessary precautions were not taken.
Home testing kit
At the Health Ministry briefing, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) Director-General Balram Bhargava said one company had already submitted the application for COVID-19 home testing kit and those of three others were in the pipeline. The kit, costing about ₹250 per unit, would soon be available in the market.
Dr. Bhargava said any person could buy a test kit, download the required mobile application and register, carefully read the user manual, conduct the test oneself, click a mobile image and upload it in the system. The test result would be given in the mobile phone. In order to ensure patient confidentiality, the data would be saved in a secured server.
Positivity rate
The country’s weekly test positivity rate stood at 15%. On May 18-19, more than two million tests were conducted across the country. Despite the increase in testing, positivity had declined from 23% a few weeks ago to 13% on Thursday, said Dr. Bhargava. By June 30, the country would have achieved the capacity of 18 lakh RTPCR and 27 lakh Rapid Antigen tests per day.
Earlier, Mr. Agarwal said a decline in active cases had been registered in the past 15 days. On May 3, the active cases were 17.13% of the overall cases, while now they were 12.1%. The recovered cases had also gone up from 81.7% to 86.7%. He said 69% of the active cases were limited to only eight States. However, in 21 States, recoveries were more than the daily reported active cases.
