The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on Thursday said, “Till date, a total of 826 samples of the people suffering from severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) /influenza like illnesses have been tested at the sites. None of the samples were found positive.”
The Council stated that it had been closely monitoring the presence of community transmissions. ”Since February 15, the ICMR has initiated sentinel surveillance to detect community transmission of COVID-19. The surveillance sites have been scaled up from 16 sites till Feb 29, 2020 to 51 sites by March 15, 2020.”
The ICMR noted that in view of the evolving nature of COVID-19 transmission, surveillance was being expanded to include more areas specially areas where COVID-19 cases have been reported.
