Are we really in a bad Covid spot? We'll know soon

NEW DELHI: The findings of the sero-surveillance report, which will show how widely Covid-19 has spread amongst the general population of the country, will be announced this week, people in the know told ET. “While the worst hit areas indicate infection in clusters, it’s not all bad news,” said one of these people. The Indian Council of Medical research, the country’s top research body, shared the data from the survey with the Cabinet secretary on Thursday, and with officials from the health ministry officials in a presentation via video conference on Saturday. The ICMR has received data from 64 out of the 70 districts in which the survey was conducted, these people informed ET. “The survey is near completion. The results from West Bengal are awaited. It got delayed due to the cyclone. We are expecting to release it this week,” said a senior official in the ICMR.76252089The sero-surveillance study tests for the presence of virus-fighting antibodies that the immune system produces to fight off an infection. Detection of antibodies against SARS-Cov2 means that the person tested has been infected with the virus. The prevalence of people who test positive for antibodies will also indicate whether India is seeing community transmission, or the third phase of transmission of Covid.Community transmission is said to happen when the source of the infection in any particular case cannot be traced, i.e., a patient who has tested positive has not been, to their knowledge, in contact with an infected person or travelled to a country where the virus has been circulating.The ICMR and the health ministry have so far maintained that India has not yet seen community transmission. But some public health experts and doctors are of the view that community transmission may be underway in some parts of the country which have seen a sharp rise in the number of cases. The survey was conducted in 60 districts of 21 states and Union Territories which were categorized into four strata — zero, low, medium and high. According to the protocol, pooled sero-prevalence from the group of districts from each of four strata have been used to estimate the prevalence of Covid-19 infection in the country. The household-level, cross-sectional survey has covered 24,000 adults distributed equally across four strata of districts.“The study will make the results of antibody testing more informative. This will tell us whether antibodies remain in the body, what levels of antibodies provide immunity, how the disease responds in people who had various severities of infection or who have other medical conditions,” said a senior government official. According to the health ministry, there are at present 120,406 active cases in the country. During the last 24 hours, a total of 5,220 Covid-19 patients have recovered, making a cumulative total of 119,293 recovered patients.

from Economic Times https://ift.tt/2Uk8xks