Silent Spreaders Can Pose Biggest Challenge With Unlock-1:0

Bhubaneswar: With India going to open up partially from the Covid-19 lockdown and the number of infections increasing phenomenally, the biggest challenge for the country will be the Silent Spreaders – those who have the virus but don’t show symptoms. Today, India has more than two lakh fifty thousand infections and the numbers are growing phenomenally. It is expected that by the end of June, the number of infected people in India may cross a million people. With this increase, the role of asymptomatic people adds significance.

The opening up of movement of people from one state to another in the last few weeks saw more than two million people moving from the urban clusters to the villages and taking the virus with them from the cities to the hinterlands. It resulted in the number of infections rising also in those areas that had not reported sizable numbers till the second week of May.

Now the situation in India is going to be critical with the number of asymptomatic people increasing. These people with no symptoms of the virus may infect many others unknowingly. It will be challenging for the authorities and health officials to identify the asymptomatic persons and keep them in quarantine. Only a swift and active surveillance mechanism to monitor the movement of people from severely affected areas and implementation of social distancing norms can help in avoiding the spread of Covid-19 from the Silent Spreaders. The invisible virus has to be avoided at any cost and it requires breaking the chain. Masks and social distance practice will hold the key to successfully fighting the virus.

The presymptomatic and asymptomatic persons may not show the symptoms of virus for few days and in between infect others. They show no serious signs of illness but still can spread the disease to many. India’s increasing concern will be these silent spreaders with increasing number of cases. To avoid transmission of the disease from these silent spreaders is to avoid contact with them. This will require us to stay home and abide by the distancing norms.

Odisha government’s decision to strictly implement weekend shutdown is a good step for keeping people at homes and breaking the chain of transmission. The night curfew and the shutdown along with implementation of social distancing norms hold the key to successful management of the virus pandemic.

Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik also stressed on the issue in his latest message to the people of the state. He rightly said that the current month is crucial and the sacrifice that people had made during the lockdown should not be allowed to go waste.

Opening up of restaurants, shops, markets and many other facilities will bring the risks of new infections. As most of the infected people in India are asymptomatic, the only way out is to restrict the movement at these crowded places. A large part of the infections reported in the country are asymptomatic and were conformed only after Covid-19 tests. In Odisha the percentage of asymptomatic patients is more than seventy.

Protecting the most vulnerable i.e., elderly people, people with health issues, children and pregnant women needs that they avoid crowd and stay inside homes till the infections die down. Officials managing the pandemic need to implement strict norms for the places that will open up in the coming days. Individuals should take utmost precautions to protect themselves and their family members with wearing masks in public and practicing social distancing to avoid spread from the silent spreaders.