ICMR to conduct pan-India serosurvey as India's COVID count reach 7.9 lakh

As Coronavirus cases in country are rising, ICMR said that a nationwide survey will be conducted to determine exposure of virus among population. It said that survey would be a follow-up to a similar study conducted in May, results of which are yet to be released.

Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) will conduct a 'serosurvey' study which involves testing of blood serum of people to check for prevalence of antibodies against coronavirus infection. final results of serosurvey conducted by ICMR in May, which focused on infections of mid-April is still under process, Rajesh Bhushan, Officer on Special Duty in Union Health Ministry said on Thursday. 

Bhushan furr said findings of sero-survey, which has been done in Delhi by National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) as a part of which 22,000 samples were collected from June 27 to July 5 from 11 districts, is being processed. "In near future, ICMR is planning a follow up sero-survey pan-India to earlier sero-survey that y had done for mid-April infections," Bhushan explained.

" sero-survey that ICMR conducted across country focused on infections of mid-april and preliminary findings were shared. As you kw all such sero-surveillance studies or any or scientific study is subject to peer-review and those inputs are also incorporated. So that process is going on. We will be in a position to share it once that gets over," he said.

 serosurvey had two parts — estimating fraction of general population that has been infected with SARS-CoV-2 and estimating number of people who have been infected with coronavirus in containment zones of hotspot cities, ICMR officials had earlier said.   lgG antibodies take around 15 days to develop immunity in body to fight against infection.

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India's COVID tally

As per Ministry of Health & Family Welfare update on Friday morning, India reported 475 deaths and 26,506 new COVID-19 cases in last 24 hours. number of positive cases stands at 7,93,802 while number of active cases is at 2,76,685. number of recoveries in country has exceeded number of active cases as 4,95,513 people are cured/ discharged/ migrated.

ICMR on COVID vaccine

Health Ministry's Officer on Special Duty (OSD) Rajesh Bhushan, clarified ICMR's controversial August 15 deadline. He said that ICMR- DG Balram Bhargava's letter was intended to 'expedite duly approved clinical trials without compromising on safety & security concerns'. He added that while locations of trials had been finalised, trials are yet to begin.

(with PTI inputs)

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