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

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

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

Bhushan further said the findings of the 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 the near future, ICMR is planning a follow up sero-survey pan-India to the earlier sero-survey that they had done for mid-April infections," Bhushan explained.

"The sero-survey that ICMR conducted across the country focused on infections of mid-april and preliminary findings were shared. As you know all such sero-surveillance studies or any other 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.

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

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India's COVID tally

As per the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare update on Friday morning, India reported 475 deaths and 26,506 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours. The number of positive cases stands at 7,93,802 while the number of active cases is at 2,76,685. The number of recoveries in the country has exceeded the 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 the locations of the trials had been finalised, the trials are yet to begin.

(with PTI inputs)

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