Serosurveillance kicks off in Prakasam district
ONGOLE: After conducting serosurveillance in Krishna, Anantapur, East Godavari and Nellore districts, the state government has kicked off the survey—which estimates the presence of antibodies against an infectious disease and measures a population’s immunity against the infection—in Prakasam district.
District officials, who on Wednesday collected blood samples from volunteers in Kandukur and Ongole division limits, said the procedure would be completed in five days. The survey, being monitored by the biochemistry wing of the Ongole government general hospital, is being carried out with the help of health department as per the prescribed norms of the Indian Council of Medical Research, the officials added.
According to official information, teams of health workers are to collect 1,000 samples per day, which would be preserved in the Covid laboratories of the GGH. The sample collection will be in a 60:40 ratio, with 60 per cent from containment clusters and the remaining from non-containment zones.
“The government has decided to evaluate Covid-19 infection trend and herd immunity levels of people in Prakasam district by analysing how many individuals have developed antibodies against the coronavirus without showing any symptom,” Dr D Sree Ramulu, superintendent of Ongole-GGH, said.
The first serosurveillance showed that the Krishna district had the highest percentage of people exposed to the coronavirus (20.7%), Nellore recorded the lowest (8.3%). It also revealed that only a small percentage of people who contracted the virus were symptomatic.