ICMR National Serosurvey Report Suggests 64 Lakh Indians Were Already Infected With Covid 19 By May

The results of the National serosurvey conducted by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) have been released and it indicates that by early May, 6.4 million in India were infected with Covid 19.

(File Photo/ AFP)

New Delhi: The results of the first National serosurvey done by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has now been published in the Indian Journal of Medical Research and it shows that India had around 6.4 million Covid-19 infections by early May. The survey which was conducted between May 11 and June 4 in 21 states, indicates that 0.73 percent of adults in India were exposed to Covid-19 infection. The report says 'the findings of the serosurvey indicated a low prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in the general population in India in early May 2020. As most of the population remains susceptible to infection, our public health strategy needs to plan for an inevitable increase in transmission.' Serosurvey is a method of disease surveillance in which blood samples of people are collected to test for the presence of antibodies specific to a pathogen. For Covid 19, tests were done to check for IgG antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 that normally appear 14 days after the infection and continue to be present in the blood serum for months. In the national serosurvey, a total of 30,283 households and 28,000 individuals were tested for IgG antibodies. According to a report by PTI, half (48.5 percent) of the participants were aged between 18 and 45 and 51.5 percent (14,390) were females. In all, 18.7 percent of the participants had an occupation with a high risk of exposure to potentially infected persons. The results show that the seroprevalence ranged between 0.62 percent and 1.03 percent across the four strata of districts. "The findings of our survey indicated that the overall seroprevalence in India was low, with less than 1 percent of the adult population exposed to SARS-CoV-2 by mid-May 2020," ICMR stated. The report says that the low prevalence indicates that India is in the early phase of the epidemic and that a large population is still susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection. The ICMR says that emphasis has to be given to 'context-specific containment measures' which includes testing of all who display symptoms, isolating positive cases, and tracing high-risk contacts 'to slow transmission and to prevent the overburdening of the health system.' But the ICMR has also said in the report that low numbers from some districts could also be a result of under-detection of Covid-19 cases due to low testing and lack of access to testing laboratories. Coronavirus cases continue to rise in India and on Thursday the country recorded a single-day spike of 95,735 infections, pushing the COVID-19 tally to 44,65,863. It is now the second-worst affected country in the world.