Coronavirus: Government begins sero-survey in select districts to closely monitor spread | India News

NEW DELHI: In order to keep a closer watch on the prevalence and spread of Covid-19 in the country, the health ministry has initiated a facility-based surveillance in all districts and a more focused population-based “sero-survey” of high – and low-risk groups in select districts.
The surveillance will be in addition to routine testing as per current guidelines, the ministry said. The move assumes significance as it will not only help the government and its agencies monitor Covid-19 trends but also check for community transmission in any part of the country.

A sero-survey involves testing of blood serum of a group of individuals and this will be used to monitor trends in prevalence of the novel coronavirus, or SARS-COV-2, infection at the district level. The surveillance will be conducted by the Indian Council of Medical Research and the National Center for Disease Control in collaboration with key stakeholders and state health departments.
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The facility-oriented surveillance is an expansion of the testing of flu and serious respiratory cases in hospitals being carried out by the government. The enhanced exercise will see 10 health facilities – six public and four private – from each district being tested.
The health ministry has so far maintained that there is no evidence yet of community transmission in the country. There are large outbreaks in some clusters but the sharp exponential rise in cases as in community transmission has not happened and the government’s containment strategy is aimed at preventing such a situation from developing, it said.
For the sero-survey, population groups will consist of low- as well as high-risk populations. The low-risk group will include outpatient attendees (non-ILI patients) and pregnant women, while healthcare workers will be surveyed among the high-risk population.
The survey will include a total of 200 samples per week and 800 samples per month. This will include at least 100 samples per week and 400 per month from the selected districts from the high-risk population. For the low-risk population, 50 samples per week and 200 per month are to be collected from outpatient attendees (non-ILI patients).
The agencies will use a combination of RT-PCR and Elisa antibody kits for these surveys. Throat and nasal swabs will be collected for RT-PCR tests and samples tested in a one-time pool of 25. However, the results of this sample pooling are only for surveillance purposes and not for diagnosis of individual patients, the ministry said.
“In addition to throat / nasal swabs, blood samples should be collected for detecting IgG antibodies for Elisa testing. In subsequent rounds, IgG Elisa-based testing of serum samples will replace RT-PCR based testing for surveillance purposes,” said the ministry.
The Elisa testing kit has been developed by National Institute of Virology in Pune along with Zydus Cadila. The kit is expected to play a critical role in surveillance of a proportion of the population exposed to the infection, after rapid antibody test kits from China failed the ICMR quality tests. Health ministry joint secretary Lav Agarwal said the Elisa kits have specificity of 97% and sensitivity of 92%.
The Covid-19 research consortium formed by the department of biotechnology and Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council has recommended 70 proposals for funding vaccines, diagnostics, therapeutics and other technologies, Agarwal said.