COVID-19 | Four cities in Madhya Pradesh standing on the cusp of community spread: Experts

Health commissioner Sudam Khade, however, said that it is up to the ICMR to decide if these four cities are inching towards community spread

Moneycontrol News

January 18, 2022 / 03:28 PM IST

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Four cities in Madhya Pradesh are close to community spread as the state has added 43,928 COVID-19 cases in just the first 17 days of the new year, taking the positivity rate from 0.20 to nine percent.

According to a Free Press Journal report quoting experts, the four cities in Madhya Pradesh which has 34,973 active cases as of now are Indore, Bhopal, Jabalpur, and Gwalior.

Arvind Rai, dean of Gandhi Medical College, said: “Earlier, we attributed the rise of corona cases to travel but things have changed. The way cases are being reported shows it is almost community spread.”

Echoing him, Manoj Indulkar, dean of Shyam Shah Medical College, Rewa, said: “Technically, we cannot say it is community spread as ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research) is there to decide that but practically we are sure that it is very close to community spread.”

Health commissioner Sudam Khade, however, said that it is up to the ICMR to decide if these four cities are inching towards community spread.

COVID-19 Vaccine

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

How many types of vaccines are there?

There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?

Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.

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