Travel, kids key causes for COVID transmission: Study

The study revealed that there was a 79 per cent risk of contracting the infection if a person travelled in group for more than six hours, senior IAS officer B Chandra Mohan, one of the authors of the study, told DT Next. It is the largest scientific study of the pandemic from India.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science, which publishes Science, has deemed the study to be of gold standard, and the data from it would now be accessed by virologists and policymakers across the world.

“The findings of the study would help a middle-income country like India to analyse how the virus spreads among the public and how it behaves in the case of different age groups,” Chandra Mohan, a medical graduate before becoming a civil servant, added. “With never-before insights, the study is also an eye-opener on how children are spreading of virus. Children are equally susceptible to spread the virus,” he explained.

What makes this paper different from the earlier ones published by experts from China and the West is that it identifies the infection and mortality rates among various age groups. So far, not much data is available on children. “The case-fatality ratio spanned from 0.05 per cent at ages 5-17 years to 16.6 per cent at ages ≥85 years. This primary data is urgently needed for low-resource countries to guide on COVID control measures,” he added.

After evaluating the public in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, the study co-authored by Health Secretary J Radhakrishnan and Animal Husbandry Secretary K Gopal has also found that 71 per cent in the State do not spread virus. Also, the risk of death was higher among men. The magnitude of this difference widened in the oldest age groups. Higher mortality in older age groups and among men have similarly been observed in high-income settings, the authors explained in the paper published in Science.

Their analysis also suggested that social interaction among children may be conducive to transmission of coronavirus among the same age group. Analyses of fatal outcomes in TN and AP reveal an overall case-fatality ratio of 2.1 per cent, added the study.

“Now we are working on another study related to Madurai. The final abstract along with data will be submitted to Lancet and the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA),” said Chandra Mohan, who is also the district nodal officer for Madurai.