Kolkata, 14 May, 2020

 

 

Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), New Delhi, in collaboration with Department of Health and Family Welfare, Govt of India and National Centre for Disease Control with support from State health departments and key stakeholders including WHO, India, is conducting a community based sero-survey to estimate the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in Indian population. In this survey, 69 districts from 21 States have been incorporated out of which there are six districts of West Bengal also. These districts are, Kolkata, South 24 Parganas, Medinipur East, Jhargram, Bankura and Alipurduar.

The survey is coordinated by ICMR’s National Institute of Epidemiology (NIE) and National Institute of Research in Tuberculosis (NIRT), Chennai. This household level cross-sectional survey will cover 24,000 adults distributed equally across four strata of districts categorized on the basis of reported cases of COVID-19.

A sero-survey involves testing of venous blood samples of a group of individuals to determine the presence of antibodies against that infection. People from Red, Orange and Green zones in a district will be tested for COVID-19 at random to check if they have developed IgG antibodies against the infection even though they are asymptomatic or show mild symptoms. The survey will involve collection of venous blood samples from 400 randomly selected individuals (one per household) from 10 clusters in each selected district, divided into low risk and high risk groups. 

 

Sera from these individuals will be tested for presence of Immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibodies using ELISA test developed by ICMR-National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune. The results of the survey will provide information about spread of SARS-CoV-2 infection in different parts of the country.

 

The survey will be conducted at 10 health facilities (six public and four private), testing outpatient attendees and pregnant women (constituting the low-risk group), and frontline healthcare workers (constituting high-risk population). 

 

Besides this community-based survey, Ministry of Health is also initiating hospital-based surveillance to monitor the trend of infection in all districts.

 

 

SSS

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