thiruvananthapuram abdul azeez a resident of pothencode who died of covid19 may be listed down as the first unlinked local transmission case recorded in the district till date an asymptomatic carrier may have spread the infection to abdul azeez after march 6 the health team which did contact tracing and case investigation is learnt to have concluded the district administration will also officially rule out any community spread in the area since all of the samples over 200 were tested negative besides an extensive analysis of data collected based on ambulance movement patients who visited general practitioners in private and government hospitals in the area call centre data and fieldlevel surveillance also did not yield any information on patients with symptoms or cases which were referred for surveillance the health team believes that it may have been a onetoone transmission and the source would not have shown any symptoms chances of community spread have been ruled out considering the absence of cluster of cases which should have happened with the source spreading infection in the area if there was any community spread we could have had 1520 cases source is not of high priority now since there is no indication of danger of rapid spread of the disease more than 200 samples have turned negative said district collector k gopalakrishnan as per the data collected by the health team onset of symptoms occurred in the patient on march 15 or 16 considering he had contracted infection from a source after march 6 the date of onset of symptoms matched with the ideal incubation period the persons who attended prayer meetings and other meetings after march 6 were also screened and none of the samples were positive which again affirmed that there was no spread and the persons who were screened may not have been the carriers it was this conclusion which forced health team to look for onetoone transmission and at present an asymptomatic carrier is suspected as the sourcethe team also did an inquiry following complaints that azeez might have contracted infection from a private hospital the hospital data showed that a patient was under treatment at the private hospital however his samples were tested and it came negative another patient was admitted to the hospital for a surgery and the patient did not have any symptomsa detailed data analysis was also done for patients who turned up in hospitals with lower respiratory infection during this period none of those cases demanded further tests for covid19 infection which was one more reason to rule out community spread the team which has now stopped sample collection is however screening for symptomatic cases emerging from the area antibody tests may also be conducted to check presence of antibodies as part of community screening