Govt soon to conduct pan-India sero-survey

New Delhi: Even though the final results of the first sero-survey, which was conducted by the ICMR in May, has not yet been released, the Union Health Ministry has mulled conducting a nationwide sero-surveillance to evaluate the trend of Coronavirus infection among the people.

While talking to reporters during the first-ever press conference after a month on Thursday, Health Ministry's OSD Rajesh Bhushan had said, "In the near future, ICMR is planning a follow up sero-survey pan-India to the earlier sero-survey that they had done for mid-April infections."

When asked about the final results of the first sero-survey, Bhushan said, "The results of the sero-survey that had been conducted by the research body in May, which focused on infections of mid-April, is still under process." "The sero-survey that ICMR conducted across the country focused on infections of mid-April and preliminary findings were shared. Such sero-surveillance studies or any other scientific study is subject to peer-review and those inputs are also incorporated. So that process is going on. We will be in a position to share it once that gets over," he further said.

As per the ICMR, a sero-survey involves testing of blood serum of a group of individuals that helps in understanding the proportion of the population exposed to SARS-CoV-2 infection including asymptomatic individuals.

As per the ICMR's data, out of 83 districts, 65 districts were surveyed in the first part of the sero-survey that estimated that 0.73 per cent of the population had showed evidence of past exposure to COVID-19.