NEW DELHI: The Centre on Thursday announced that another round of pan-India sero-surveillance in order to assess the spread of coronavirus is being planned even as the full report of a previous sero-survey carried out in May is yet to be released.
Rajesh Bhushan, Officer on Special Duty in the Union Ministry of Health on Thursday said that the report from the previous study is under “peer-review” and a fresh survey is being planned now as the last survey gave the infection spread status till April.
Sources in the National Institute of Epidemiology under the ICMR, which has led the survey, however, said that the paper has not been approved for publishing by the Council yet despite several reminders and is yet to be submitted to the Indian Journal of Medical Research.
This indicates that the paper would not have reached the peer-review stage yet. ICMR DG Dr. Balram Bhargava could not be contacted to comment on this despite repeated attempts.
The last survey - testing blood serum from representative samples to check for antibodies against the virus-- had been carried out in mid-May in two parts—one in 83 districts across 21 states, categorised on the basis of zero, low, medium and high caseloads—and the other in the containment areas in 10 worst affected districts.
Last month, Dr. Bhargava in a press-conference had said that the preliminary analysis of the first part of the survey showed that less than 1 percent of the population in non-hotspot districts had been infected with the pathogen.
Since the survey was done in late April and IgG antibodies usually appear two to three weeks after the infection--it was estimated that the survey results showed the infection prevalence rate of April end.
No finding from the second part of the survey has however been released. This newspaper had reported that 15-30 percent of the samples tested from many containment areas in hotspot districts were found to have antibodies against SARS CoV2, suggesting that the viral exposure was much higher than actually detected cases.
Meanwhile, asked if India has entered the community transmission phase, Bhushan said on Thursday: “Even today, the (Union) health minister (Harsh Vardhan) clearly said after the group of ministers’ meeting that India has not reached the stage of community transmission. In some geographical areas, there have been localised outbreaks.”
He underlined that 80 per cent of the active Covid-19 caseload in the country is concentrated in 49 districts.
“In a country of more than 733 districts, if 49 districts account for 80 per cent cases, then it is not justifiable to talk about community transmission," he said.
The official also stressed that wherever there are active cases, if the prescribed protocol is followed, in three days close contacts of active cases can be traced and tracked.
"So in such a situation in which you can trace and track close contacts of active cases, talking about community transmission is not justified," Bhushan asserted.