What are the 3 Stages of Epidemic? How Do We Identify Them? All You Need to Know

India is currently witnessing the third wave of Covid-19 as the number of infections is once again on the rise. The Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) in its latest bulletin has stated that Covid-19 has reached the community transmission stage. Community spread of an epidemic occurs when an infectious disease is spread from an already infected person and not from a person to a group, making it difficult to identify the origin of the infection.

INSACOG, a central government organisation, works for lab examinations of mutations of coronavirus across the country to understand the further developments and chain of this contagion.

An epidemic starts when an infected person visits a highly-populated area or a public place, leaving the infection in the air. Following this, the people present in that particular area get infected, leading to the situation of an epidemic.

After a few days, the virus starts spreading among people and it becomes difficult to identify the origin of the virus. It gradually leads to the phase of the epidemic considered the stage of community transmission. This simply means that it becomes very difficult to trace the chain of infection.

Health experts believe that community transmission is the last stage of an epidemic, but recent reports of WHO say that it has three stages before it ends.

At the very first stage, no active cases are found. In the second, sporadic cases are found and in the last and third stage, a cluster of cases is reported. If new cases are not identified for the next 28 days, it is considered under the category of no active case. As per WHO, hundreds of thousands of new cases of Covid-19 and Omicron have been reported in the last two weeks. This can be referred to as a cluster of cases, meaning that the epidemic has reached the groups.

In the initial phase of pandemic, various strategies are made to break the chain of the virus. When only sporadic cases are detected, rapid tests are done and strategies are made to identify the origin of the virus, leading to the isolation of the infected individuals. This process reduces the number of people carrying the virus, thereby breaking the chain of infection among the people.

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