SHILLONG: With Meghalaya recording the highest single day positive cases on Thursday, bulk of which are from capital town, government was still hesitant to call it a community spread, although the DHS (MI) Dr Aman War conceded that the Shillong was heading towards a community spread. However Deputy Chief Minister, Prestone Tynsong not to mouth the expression “community spread”.
Interacting with media on Thursday, he declined to give a direct reply if community transmission of COVID-19 in the State had started.
“Yes, the number of COVID-19 positive cases is going up. Let us be individually prepared. But I will not like to say anything if we are heading to community transmission. You may draw your own conclusion,” Tynsong said when asked about the statement of the DHS, that the state was heading towards community transmission.
Some informed circles believe that the spike in cases was mainly due to enhanced rate of tests being carried out.
This also is an indication that there are a good number of people already infected but are asymptomatic. These circles believe that the number was going to continually rise in the coming days before a peak was reached.
When asked about contact tracing of the people who were tested positive in the random sampling, Dr War said that the contact tracing was still going on even as he said that he was in no position to provide the details since the number was very huge.
According to him, they are considering people who had conversation for more than 15 minutes with the people who are tested positive as high risk contacts. The Health department initiated the random testing after they were not able to track the source of 24 people who tested positive.
Meanwhile, Dr War informed that the people who are tested positive by the antigen test are taken as positive adding that they are not retesting them with the RTCPR test to reconfirm. “We will do the RTPCR test only if the doctors have doubts,” he said.
Meanwhile, Tynsong said that the government will encourage people who are tested positive to undergo home quarantine if they have places in their homes to isolate themselves.
“The government will be making arrangements only for those who do not have a space in their houses to isolate themselves,” he said.
