BHUBANESWAR: Only 1.4 per cent of all the persons of State Capital who underwent the first phase of the serial sero-survey conducted by ICMR-RMRC have developed anti-bodies for the Covid-19 infection.Officials of Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC), who assisted RMRC in the ongoing survey, said a total 951 samples were collected at community level for the study in the first phase. “It has been found that community level exposure to SARS Cov 2 virus is relatively low with a pooled Sero-prevalence of 1.4 per cent. This implies that large-scale transmission has probably not occurred in the city,” they said.
The civic body, however, said it also implies that a large majority of the population is still susceptible to the infection and hence all preventive measures suggested by the Government, including use of masks and social distancing must be followed without complacency. “Every citizen has a role to play in the fight against Covid-19,” said Municipal Commissioner Prem Chandra Chaudhary.After completion of first phase of serial sero-survey, the second phase sample collection in the first round is continuing which is expected to be completed by Friday.
In the second phase, the RMRC teams are collecting samples of people from high risk groups which include doctors, police, journalists, street vendors and other sections. The second round of survey will begin after 28 days of the first survey.
Apart from sero-survey, the civic body is conducting rapid antigen tests with technical support from Health department. On Wednesday, samples were drawn from 55 media personnel for antigen test. The test results were found to be negative for all the samples, officials said.