NEW DELHI: With 92 per cent sensitivity and 97 per cent specificity, experts claim that the sero-survey results in the national capital are accurate and that the population covered has already gained antibodies to resist the coronavirus.
As per the Ministry of Health, the survey in the national capital by the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) from June 27 to July 10 which tested more than 23,000 citizens revealed that 22.4 per cent people who were part of the survey have prevalence of IgG antibodies.
“It was done when the city was experiencing the peak of the pandemic. By now, the percentage of people with IgG antibodies will be even more. But that doesn’t rule out the possibility that the rest of the population is not at risk. A large population is still vulnerable,” said Dr Jugal Kishore, head of the community medicines department in Safdarjung Hospital.
Dr Kishore added that with time people are developing antibodies but how long those will be effective cannot be ascertained yet.
“A second infection is rarely happening. The antibody count must be around 35 per cent by now. Because of this Delhi has seen a plateau in terms of infection rate. By next month, the infection rate will further go down. If half the population attain the antibodies, we can defeat the virus, like other countries without aiming for herd immunity,” he stated.
Talking about the chances of those with antibodies of not getting infected further, Dr Lalit Kant, former Scientist ‘G’ and Head (Epidemiology and. Communicable Diseases Division), ICMR stated that more information is needed to make a call. “The NCDC did the survey based on the ELISA test.
More information is required to accurately say that this 22 per cent of the population is free from the virus.
What kind of antibodies they have that probably killed the virus is to be known, therefore it is not clear if these people are protected.
"It should be clearly understood that sero-survey’s figure is only an exposure number,” he mentioned. Talking about herd immunity, Dr PK Tyagi, an expert in community medicine pointed out that attaining the required figure for it is not an easy task and cannot be achieved by simply providing relaxations.
Herd immunity a hard task
Talking about herd immunity, Dr PK Tyagi, an expert in community medicine, pointed out that attaining the required figure for it is not an easy task.