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Should India reveal transmission history of each COVID-19 patient or will it worsen panic?

According to an ICMR study, it could take a minimum of 20 days to a few months for the start of community transmission to become visible.

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The union health ministry has not divulged the transmission history of coronavirus patients in recent days. According to an Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) study, it could take a minimum of 20 days to a few months for the start of community transmission to become visible. Another ICMR report claims that community transmission can be delayed, but cannot be averted.

ThePrint asks: Should India reveal transmission history of each COVID-19 patient or will it worsen panic?


Release of travel and transmission history of COVID-19 patients may lead to more suspicion and panic

Dhvani Mehta
Senior Resident Fellow, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy

Initial reports of the lockdown experience show self-appointed vigilantes forcing those who have ventured out to do sit-ups in public. The police have been beating people, with news channels praising these ‘lathi lessons’ and berating ‘covidiots’. The release of travel and transmission history, which is necessarily anonymised, might create even more suspicion and panic among a ‘self-righteous’ public.

However, the ICMR should explain its justification for discontinuing the disclosure of travel/infection history of COVID-19 patients. Is it because the number of cases has risen too sharply to make disclosure feasible? Is it because that they anticipate that community transmission has set in, which might make such disclosure of limited value?

Such information will be in consonance with the citizens’ right to accurate, timely information from the State. This right, however, does not translate into the right to know the travel and transmission history of every COVID-19 patient. A pandemic necessarily imposes some restrictions on rights, while also imposing duties on both citizens and the State. This requires the government to proactively disclose the criteria used to test persons, the manner in which it is carrying out contact tracing, and the measures it is undertaking to protect the privacy of persons about whom information is disclosed.


Publicising travel history of COVID-19 patients will help warn others who may have shared the bus, flight, train

Dr Anant Bhan
Researcher, Global Health, Bioethics and Health Policy

The travel history of anyone who is confirmed as having been diagnosed with COVID-19 is a useful exercise when you are trying to trace all potential contacts to be able to either quarantine them, or test them to eliminate the possibility they acquired infection. Publicising this when the patient has also traveled can help in two ways — identify potential platforms for chains of transmission, and to help warn others who might have been on those platforms (airline, trains, buses etc) so that they can be encouraged to quarantine themselves, and for them to be tested on a priority basis.

This exercise is usually not followed upon when you have confirmed community spread happening, and hence the infection spread is not just limited to travelers, or to those infected or their contacts. In such cases, other approaches focused on containment, aggressive testing and isolating across the board (with treatment) are prioritised.

In India, given that we have a strong chance that community spread is happening, and yet testing is not yet widely available, authorities should continue contact tracing exercises, partly through publicising travel history. Number of confirmed cases in India is rising but is still under 500 and the tracing exercise is still manageable. However, this should not be done in a way that leads to stigma. Care should be taken to protect the privacy and confidentiality.


Dangerous to reveal information of those infected, Indians must be properly educated about coronavirus first

T Jacob John
Former professor of Clinical Virology, CMC Vellore

The moment you declare the information of those infected, you have to protect them from getting lynched. People have not been prepared with detailed information about this disease so far. The only government talk was last Thursday when PM Modi addressed the whole country, and that was an address on the problem and solutions. People are receiving education from ‘Whatsapp university.’

The primary duty of the government is to educate people but that has not happened. That is a flaw in our thinking. If you educate people, they will do the right thing. If you don’t educate them, don’t expect them to do the right thing. If they think it’s a trivial matter, they will get out and have fun on the roads. It all depends on how well they have been educated.

If people have not been educated about coronavirus it is risky to announce that their neighbourhood house has an infected person. Nobody can guarantee that a group of people will not come and throw petrol bombs on the house. If people had been told how to respond to coronavirus cases in their locality ahead of time, they would have helped.

In a country where people look for any reason to stigmatise, the health ministry and ICMR need to be very cautious so that they don’t hurt people’s sentiments. It’s a thin line. It is the job of the health ministry’s executive wing to tell people the right set of information.


Revealing transmission history of COVID-19 patients may discourage co-operation from people

Dr Soham D. Bhaduri
Editor, The Indian Practitioner & health-care commentator 

The government has until this point strongly held that community transmission of COVID-19 hasn’t ensued yet and that India is still in the local transmission phase. It is the lingering suspicion about the veracity of this statement that fuels questions like whether the transmission histories of cases need to be made public.

However, a majority of existing patients anyway belong to the category of local, known chains of transmission and that’s what we have been predominantly testing, until late when the strategy was revised. Yes, the numbers are surging day after day, but making the data public will have its repercussions. For established chains of transmission, revealing details may discourage co-operation from people and can have ethical dimensions too. In case of community transmission, you anyway don’t find that link.

The important thing for the government eventually is to be true and honest, both in its testing strategy and in sharing information about the magnitude and nature of the problem. That will go a long way in ensuring public confidence and cooperation, which is in the government’s own interest.


Also read: How can India counter coronavirus stigma, boycotts and inadequate social distancing?


By Unnati Sharma, journalist at ThePrint

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1 COMMENT

  1. Each Indian is vulnerable to this scourge, entitled to the best information available that can improve her chances of survival. The stage of panic is long gone. The whole country is in lockdown, what more remains to be disclosed / hidden from them. The natural tendency / instinct of this government has been to be secretive, frugal in sharing information that – going beyond applications under the RTI Act – should be on official web sites. There is also a trust deficit. On something as basic to dealing with this pandemic as whether the stature of community spread has been reached. More a case now of the people trusting the government than of its trusting them with sensitive information.

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