‘Maybe once in 1000 years’: ICMR on Covid-19 transmission from bats to humans

The incident of humans contracting coronavirus from bats is an extremely rare event, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said, adding that a Chinese research showed that the Sars-CoV-2 virus which has causes Covid-19 in humans is in a mutated form.

“Coronavirus is found in bats. We have come to know from the research in China so far that the virus which has affected humans either may have been because the bat virus developed such mutations that it developed the capacity to cause disease in humans or it got transmitted to pangolins from bats first and then to human beings. This question is being asked because we started a survey on emerging infectious diseases and to see if those viruses can be found in bats. We found the presence of coronavirus in two bat species but they are not capable of affecting human beings adversely,” senior ICMR scientist R Gangakhedkar said on Wednesday.

“The instances of transmission of virus from bats to humans can happen may be once in around 1000 years or so. It is a rare event,” he said.

Gangakhedkar, who heads the Head of Epidemiological and Communicable Diseases department at ICMR, said that a recent study by the medical body has found the presence of coronavirus in two Indian bat species, but those are incapable of affecting humans adversely.

These bat coronaviruses have no relation with Sars-CoV-2 responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic, he said.

The Union Health Ministry, meanwhile, declared 170 districts in 25 states as Covid-19 hotspots on Wednesday and 207 districts in 27 states as non-hotspots, reiterating that there has been no community transmission of the disease in the country so far.

Addressing the daily briefing to provide updates on coronavirus situation in the country, Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Health Lav Agarwal said that states have been asked to classify districts witnessing higher number of cases as hotspots, districts where some cases have been found as non-hotspots, and those which have reported no cases as green zones.

Hotspots are those districts which are reporting more number of cases or where the rate of growth of Covid-19 cases is high, Agarwal said, adding a detailed direction has been issued to states stating consolidated efforts are required to utilise this period of lockdown to curb the spread of the virus.

In order to break the chain of transmission, focus needs to be on contact tracing, monitoring and clinical management. States have been asked to uniformly implement the containment plan in every district across the country, Agarwal said.