More than 200 non-migrants, including people without any travel history, have tested positive for Covid-19 in Jharkhand in June, indicating that the state could be headed for community transmission of the coronavirus, although health officials disagree.

government figures highlight. Health officials, however, beg to differ.

According to figures collected by the National Health Mission (NHM) and compiled by The Telegraph Online, as many as 208 non-migrants tested positive for Covid-19 from June 1 to June 24 in Jharkhand. As many as 1,531 cases surfaced in the state during this period and 1,323 of them –more than 80 per cent– were migrants, the NHM figures state.

While the government rightly attributed the unprecedented increase in cases to the return of migrants, the rising transmission among non-migrants could be the elephant in the room, a senior doctor associated with the Indian Medical Association said.

The government, he said, was paying special attention to migrants and segregating them for tests and institutional quarantine. But others, who did not fall in the category of migrants, were mostly left on their own, he added.

However, doctors involved in treating Covid patients in Jharkhand maintained that coronavirus is far from reaching the stage of community transmission in the state.

“Most of the non-migrants, who tested positive for Covid-19 in Ranchi, had a travel history. The ones who did not travel were directly related to somebody who travelled outside Jharkhand,” said the the in-charge of state's Covid-19 task force at Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS), Dr Prabhat Kumar. “We cannot call this community transmission as of now,” he added.

State health secretary Nitin Madan Kulkarni said that Jharkhand had a population of around 3.75 crore and only 200-odd locals have tested positive for the virus in June, which according to him, was not a trend alarming enough to predict possibilities of community transmission.

“If you see the figures, you will notice that the number of locals testing positive is negligible compared to the number of migrants testing positive,” said Kulkarni. “Sero survey has started. Once we have the reports, we will get a clearer picture,” he added.

According to government data, 398 non-migrants have tested positive for Covid-19 in Jharkhand since the appearance of the virus in the state on March 31. Covid transmission cases among locals reported in June alone forms more than 50 per cent of the total count of locals who have tested positive so far in Jharkhand.

As many as 70 non-migrants tested positive for Covid-19 in May and even fewer in the former months, government figures stated. “We have noticed that many patients coming to RIMS for other ailments are testing positive for Covid-19. Even some survivors of road accidents have tested positive lately. We need to do tests through random samplings in order to detect more cases among locals,” said RIMS Director Dr D.K Singh.