Till Friday evening, Ghaziabad reported 8,907 cases with 7,536 recoveries and 70 deaths with 2% of the population having been tested (Representational)A five-day sero surveillance began in Ghaziabad on Friday, with 10 teams set to collect 1,440 samples from persons above the age of five years across 45 marked areas in the district. Ghaziabad is among 11 districts across UP where serological surveillance is being held for the first time.
“Over the next five days, we will be getting samples from teams deployed for the survey. The state government has laid down protocols for the survey which is being followed by each district. There is no upper age limit in terms of sample collection while the lower age limit has been set at five years. Our focus on testing remains the same as we target between 2,500-3,000 tests on a daily basis,” said N K Gupta, CMO, Ghaziabad.
Till Friday evening, Ghaziabad reported 8,907 cases with 7,536 recoveries and 70 deaths with 2% of the population having been tested. Till Friday, approximately 2 lakh tests have been conducted. Officials said the teams will collect 32 samples from each area, which will include eight samples of minors between the age of 5 and 18 years. The survey will cover prevalence of Covid-19 as well as Hepatitis B and C simultaneously, officials said. The samples will be sent to King George Medical College, Lucknow where data from all 11 districts will be collated. Of the 45 clusters, only nine are in densely populated rural areas, most of which are situated at the Delhi border .
In the last two months, Ghaziabad saw an overall dip in positivity rate from approximately 7% to 4%, officials said. This can also be attributed to increased antigen testing following the directives of the state government. Daily cases have increased from approximately 100 during the last phase of lockdown to around 150 cases daily after unlockdown, officials said.
“Our strategy still remains early detection. We are focussing extra on areas where there have been no bcases in the past. We don’t want them to become future hotspots as there is increased travel of people between Delhi and Ghaziabad. We have demarcated buffer and containment zones and test extensively to control the situation,” said Ghaziabad DM Ajay Shankar Pandey.