ICMR's sero-survey suggests India may have had 64 lakh COVID-19 infections by May itself

Citing results of its serological survey, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on September 11 said 64 lakh Indians had been already infected by COVID-19 by May. These cases were undiagnosed and the patients had developed antibodies against the novel coronavirus.

The sero-survey further revealed that for every confirmed COVID-19 case in May, there were 82-130 infections that went undetected.

The sero-survey had been conducted between May 11 and June 4. The exercise had covered 28,000 individuals whose blood samples were tested for IgG antibodies using COVID Kavach ELISA kit. Sero prevalence at the national level in May was 0.73 percent of the Indian population.

Sero-positivity was the highest in the age group of 18-45 years (43.3 percent), followed by those between 46-60 years (39.5 percent) and was the lowest among those aged above 60 (17.2 percent).

"The findings of our survey indicated that the overall sero-prevalence in India was low, with less than one percent of the adult population exposed to SARS-CoV-2 by mid-May 2020. The low prevalence observed in most districts indicates that India is in early phase of the epidemic and the majority of the Indian population is still susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection," news agency PTI cited the reported as saying.

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The findings were revealed a day after India reported a record single-day spike of 95,735 COVID-19 cases. This took the country’s overall tally to 44.6 lakh cases, which includes over 75,000 fatalities, 34.7 lakh recoveries.

According to ICMR, 11.2 samples were tested for COVID-19 on September 9. Over 5.2 crore samples have been tested in the country so far.