For the first time, the civic body has decided to conduct nine-month-long surveillance among 3,000 frontline workers. (File) AFTER MANY delays, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has initiated the sixth sero surveillance in Mumbai. For the first time, the sero survey will be conducted over nine months to find out if antibodies produced against Covid-19 are waning off.
Earlier, the civic body had decided to conduct the sixth sero survey among 10,000 people across the 24 wards in Mumbai, but due to the advent of the third wave, the plan was put on the back burner. Now, after nearly three months, the corporation started collecting samples for the survey last week.
“All our employees were busy with Covid-19 duty, so we had to delay it. Now, we have started collecting samples from last Monday,” said Suresh Kakani, Additional Commissioner, BMC.
For the first time, the civic body has decided to conduct nine-month-long surveillance among 3,000 frontline workers.
“As we have seen, the breakthrough infection (infection after taking vaccine against Covid-19) was more among the beneficiaries, who got vaccinated at the start of the mass immunisation programme in January 2021. So, to find a clinical explanation, we have decided to conduct a three-stage sero sequencing,” said Kakani. “The analysis of the antibodies in different intervals during the nine-month study will help us to gauge if the acquired antibodies are waning off with time.”
Data from the civic body showed that more fully vaccinated individuals are contracting Covid-19 than those who are partially vaccinated. On January 12, The Indian Express reported that the breakthrough infections among fully vaccinated beneficiaries stood at 15,565 between February 1 and November 7, 2021. The numbers jumped to 40,536 as of January 4, 2022, a 154 per cent increase in two months. While breakthrough infections among the partially vaccinated individuals rose from 16,933 on November 7, 2021, to 18,356 on January 4, 2022, witnessing a rise of 8.4 per cent.
The samples of the healthcare workers are being collected from the hospitals, while the blood samples of the frontline workers are being collected from across the 24 wards in the city.
The fifth sero survey conducted by the BMC in August 2021 showed that 86.64 per cent of the 8,674 people surveyed had antibodies against Covid-19. This is significantly higher than the third sero-surveillance conducted in March 2021, which found 36.3 per cent of those surveyed had antibodies against Covid-19.
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