No community transmission of COVID-19 in Odisha: Govt

The Odisha government on Monday said the state has not yet entered the community transmission stage of COVID-19 outbreak, even as 27 of the 39 positive cases were reported from just two localities of the state capital. As per a report of the Indian Institute of Public Health, Odisha has not yet entered the stage 3 of COVID-19 transmission, which is community transmission, Subroto Bagchi, the state government's spokesperson on COVID-19, said.

Chief Secretary A K Tripathy echoed Bagchi while confirming that the most of the cases were reported in Bomikhal and Surya Nagar localities in Bhubaneswar. Of the 32 cases reported in Bhubaneswar, 19 were from Bomikhal of which 18 were from the same family, officials said.

Eight cases were reported from Surya Nagar area, of which three were from the same family. Five other coronavirus infected persons were tenants of a 60-year-old COVID-19 patient, they said. Officials said that none of the patients had any travel history to abroad.

"When three brothers of a family with no foreign travel history tested positive for novel coronavirus, the administration feared that there might be community transmission of the disease.

"However, later it came to light that the three brothers had visited their father in Bhopal and contracted the disease from their father. Their family members got infected after the brothers returned to Bhubaneswar," the chief secretary said.

Similarly, in Surya Nagar, the daughter of the family got infected while visiting Kolkata, the chief secretary said.

"There is local transmission in certain clusters of Bhubaneswar but there is no community transmission," Bagchi said.

He said these areas have been declared containment zones and are being sanitised to prevent further spread of the disease, he added.