COVID-19: Community-based sero-surveillance begins in Telangana

HYDERABAD: Hyderabad-based National Institute of Nutrition (NIN) on Friday began collecting blood samples from people in three districts of Telangana — Jangaon, Kamareddy and Nalgonda — for undertaking community-based sero-surveillance of Covid-19 infection. 

The objective of sero-surveillance programme, which is part of a nationwide survey initiated by the Indian Council of Medical Research, is to find if there is any community transmission of Covid-19, to help determine the burden of infection at the community level, to monitor the trends in its transmission and help generate evidence on role of asymptomatic and mild infections in transmission. 

The outcomes will help in designing and implementing suitable Coronavirus containment measures. 

Sero-surveillance to be conducted in 4 phases

Dr A Laxmaiah, Head of Public Health at NIN, said that serum will be separated from the blood samples at a medical facility in the respective districts and safely stored in a cold storage.

Later, all the serum samples will be sent to the Chennai-based National Institute for Research in Tuberculosis for testing the presence of Covid-19 antibodies.

The institute will conduct tests on the samples using the ELISA test kit developed by National Institute of Virology, Pune.

“This is the first round of the sero-surveillance and there will be three more rounds. The first round is expected to be completed by Saturday or Sunday,” Dr Laxmaiah said. As part of the initiative, around 45 NIN officials and a few officials from the district administration have started collecting blood samples from 1,200 people in the three districts. The officials have randomly selected 10 villages in the three districts with a plan to collect samples from 40 adults in each village. 

This is to understand how the transmission of the infection has been so far and how it is taking place in the later stages, apart from giving an idea about the transmission based on gender, age and socioeconomic characteristics. The second round of sero-surveillance is expected to take place 15 days after the end of first round and two more rounds with one month gap.

The initial survey would serve as a base to determine the seroprevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in the community, while the subsequent rounds would help monitor the trends of infection in the community.
Although people were selected as per the criteria set by the ICMR, their consent is required to collect blood samples, the head of Public Health at NIN said and added that a majority of the people selected for collection of blood have not opposed the idea.