SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 12 September 2024, Shift 2 · General Awareness · Question 10 of 100

Text as printed on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; answer per SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 6 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. The questions and options here are reproduced as printed on a candidate's own response sheet for this shift — the Commission's text, unchanged. Each answer is SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet; SSC allowed challenges to it and never publishes a final key. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

What are the five Fs of indirect transmission?

(a)Fruit, fingers, flu, food and fluid
(b)Flies, fingers, fomites, food and fluid
(c)Flies, fingers, friends, food and fruit
(d)Flies, fingers, fomites, food and fruit

Answer

Why

Correct — B. Indirect transmission means the organism reaches a new host through something in between, and the teaching mnemonic for those go-betweens is the five Fs: flies, fingers, fomites, food and fluid.

Every F names a carrier, not an illness. Flies move between faeces and food, unwashed fingers carry organisms to the mouth, fomites are contaminated objects such as utensils, towels and door handles, and contaminated food and water close the route — option (b).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Fruit, fingers, flu, food and fluid — It drops fomites and inserts flu, which is a disease rather than a route, and puts fruit in place of flies. The list must name carriers.
(c)
Flies, fingers, friends, food and fruit — Friends is not one of the Fs. Person-to-person contact is direct transmission, which is what this list is being contrasted with.
(d)
Flies, fingers, fomites, food and fruit — It ends with fruit instead of fluid. Fruit is already covered by food, and dropping fluid removes contaminated water from the list.

Concept

Transmission is classified first as direct or indirect.

Direct means contact between hosts — touch, close-range droplets, or mother to child. Indirect means a vehicle or a vector carries the organism, and the five Fs name the vehicles that matter in faeco-oral disease.

Fomite is the word worth learning: any inanimate object that carries infection, from a shared towel to a currency note. Breaking a single F — handwashing, safe water, fly control — breaks the chain.

Public health texts also draw an F-diagram that uses fields, for open defecation, in place of fomites, so more than one five-F list exists in print. Answer to the list the question gives.

Key facts

The five Fs of indirect transmission are flies, fingers, fomites, food and fluid.
A fomite is an inanimate object that carries infection, such as a utensil, a towel or a door handle.
Direct transmission is host-to-host contact, while indirect transmission passes through a vehicle or a vector.

Study next

Modes of disease transmission: airborne, waterborne, vector-borne and mother-to-childFaeco-oral diseases such as cholera, typhoid, hepatitis A and amoebiasisVectors and the diseases they carry, including Anopheles, Aedes and the housefly

Common traps

Picking an option that contains a disease name such as flu, when the Fs are routes.
Reading friends into the list, which would make it direct contact rather than indirect transmission.

General Awareness carries a steady biology-and-health strand alongside the polity and history items.

Nutrition and deficiency come up at 25 Sep 2024, 12:30, GA Q.18 (the condition at the corners of the mouth from vitamin B2 deficiency, keyed cheilosis) and 23 Sep 2024, 12:30, GA Q.23 (another name for vitamin C, keyed ascorbic acid).

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.