Indore: In a bid to estimate the prevalence of COVID-19 in population, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) started ‘Sero-Survey’ in Indore on Tuesday. A team of 23 members including three scientists of ICMR reached Indore on Tuesday to conduct the sero-survey and collected samples of over 500 people across the country. These samples were randomly collected from five containment areas by dividing each containment area into four clusters.
According to Chief Medical and Health Officer Dr Pravin Jadia, a team of ICMR led by Dr Jyoti Bhatt and two other scientist have started the survey.
“They were divided into teams and have visited five containment areas including Chandan Nagar, Marimata, Meghdoot Park and Sitlamata Bazaar. They have divided each containment area into four clusters and collected 25 samples from each cluster,” Dr Jadia said.
He added that the samples will be sent to Chennai for testing and its results will clear the status and prevalence of COVID-19 in the community. Results of the samples will take about 10-15 days.
What is Sero Survey?
Indian Council of Medical Research, New Delhi, in collaboration with Dept of Health and Family Welfare, Govt of India and National Centre for Disease Control with support from State health departments and key stakeholders including WHO, India is conducting a community-based sero-survey to estimate the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in Indian population. The survey is coordinated by ICMR’s National Institute of Epidemiology (NIE) and National Institute of Research in Tuberculosis (NIRT), Chennai. This household-level cross-sectional survey will cover 24,000 adults distributed equally across four strata of districts categorized on the basis of reported cases of COVID-19.
Overall, the survey will be conducted in randomly selected districts from 21 States. The survey will involve the collection of venous blood samples from 400 randomly selected individuals (one per household) from 10 clusters in each district. Sera from these individuals will be tested for the presence of IgG antibodies using ELISA test developed by ICMR-National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune. The results of the survey will provide information about the spread of SARS-CoV-2 infection in different parts of the country.
