Bhubaneswar: Even as Odisha becomes the 15th State in the country to report nCOV19 positive on Sunday, the big revelation on Monday is a high of 53 persons in the State have come in contact with the COVID-19 positive.
In today's briefing on COVID-19, State govt's chief spokesperson on COVID-19, Subroto Bagchi, informed that the contact tracing shows that the 33-year old, who tested positive yesterday, has come in contact with 53 persons in the State, besides having contacted 76 more while travelling from Delhi to Bhubaneswar in Rajdhani Express.
The moot question here is will the COVID-19 count rise in Odisha? A look at the history of the novel coronavirus infection shows persons having close contact with a symptomatic COVID-19 person are most likely to contract the lethal virus.
Consider this instance from Kerala. This case in Kerala has a very uncanny resemblance with Odisha's case. And Kerala experience shows how that particular case led to spiralling of Covid-19 cases in Kerala.
Look at the rare similarity. On February 29, an NRI family from Italy returned via Doha, and since passengers from Doha flights weren't screened at airports during that point of time, they weren't screened at Kochi airport.
Significantly, the family-husband, wife and son-did not reveal the country they had travelled from. But later it was found that this family of three has infected 11 other persons in the state, including a fellow passenger on the Doha-Kochi flight.
And the big thing is the family was traced, only after their close relatives developed Covid-19 symptoms.
In the above context, health experts are of the view that the COVID-19 cases may post a spike within next 3-4 days.
Because, as per NIH, one of the features that makes the virus so challenging to stay in front of is, its long latency period before the characteristic flu-like fever, cough, and shortness of breath manifest.
In fact, people infected with the virus may not show any symptoms for up to two weeks, allowing them to pass it on to others in the meantime.
In Odisha's context, the contact persons are now in the incubation phase (14 days), as the Covid-19 positive has been in Odisha since March 13. He has been in isolation ward from March 15.
Anti-COVID-19 Developments World Over:
The Good news: In record time, National Institutes of Health (US) funded team of researchers has created the first atomic-scale map of a promising protein target for vaccine development . This is the so-called spike protein on the new coronavirus that causes COVID-19 (look at the image below).
As shown above, a portion of this spiky surface appendage (green) allows the virus to bind a receptor on human cells, causing other portions of the spike to fuse the viral and human cell membranes. This process is needed for the virus to gain entry into cells and infect them.
*Preclinical studies in mice of a candidate vaccine based on this spike protein are already underway at NIH’s Vaccine Research Center (VRC), part of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). An early-stage phase I clinical trial of this vaccine in people is expected to begin within weeks, said a NIH release today.