NEW DELHI: Every second Delhiite has antibodies against Covid, Delhi government announced on Tuesday, unveiling results of the latest round of sero-survey. The survey revealed 56.13% people in Delhi have antibodies. It means more than 56% of Delhi’s population was infected with
Covid and have recovered. Health minister
Satyendar Jain said Delhi was nearing herd immunity but urged people to keep wearing masks and follow social distancing even though the Covid cases are declining.
The South-East district has the highest 62.18% sero-prevalence while the
North district has the lowest, 49.09%, sero-prevalence. It was the country’s largest sero-survey for which 28000 samples were collected from 272 wards of the capital in January. Sero-prevalence has doubled in just three months, in the October round of survey only 25.5% people were found having antibodies.
The 5th round of survey began on January 15 and was completed on January 23. “This was the biggest sero-survey in the country, we had collected 28000 samples, 100 samples each from all municipal wards. The 56.13% sero-prevalence means that 56.13% people have already recovered from Covid infection. This was the largest sero-survey in the country, no other state has conducted a sero-survey of this scale before. In the last sero-survey, the positivity rate was found out to be around 25-26%, and this was the fifth sero-survey," Jain stated in a press conference.
"The cases have come down considerably and have been lower than 200 since the last 10-12 days. The positivity rate is even lesser than 1% since the last one month. I want to request you to please wear a mask, despite lower Covid cases, declining positivity rate, and lesser patients in hospitals. In the last three months, people of Delhi have carefully followed Covid appropriate behaviour,” Jain said, adding that they need to do it for a few more months.
Director general health services, Dr Nutan Mundeja, said the sero-survey was conducted along with
Maulana Azad Medical College. “We used CLIA technology, which is a more sensitive technology than ELISA technology, and the samples have been tested at ILBS so that there is uniformity across the city. We have taken 100 samples from every type of population in each ward,” the DGHS stated.
The overall seroprevalence of antibody since the initial sero-survey in July has fluctuated with a statistically significant increase during the August round followed by a dip during September and similar levels in the October round. It is for the first time that the sero-prevalence has gone above 50%. In all the previous rounds there were significant inter-district variations in the seroprevalence levels with some of the districts. In the 5th round all the districts have reported above 49% sero-prevalence, unseen in the past.
Delhi is witnessing an all time low daily Covid cases for the last few days and the number of active cases is among its lowest at 1265. The capital has conducted more than 1 crore Covid tests out of which 6.3 lakh people have tested positive. 10856 people have died while 6.2 lakh people have recovered.