Telangana: NIN to carry out sero survey to find antibodies in citizens

The sero surveillance is randomly taken up in people to understand the prevalence of antibodies against the virus. The community based sero- survey will be conducted in 30 districts of the state. The ICMR-NIN has already completed sero surveillance in Kamareddy, Nalgonda and Jangaon. Around 60.1 percent of the population in these districts has developed antibodies against COVID-19, the ICMR-National Institute of Nutrition (ICMR-NIN) said on July 23.

The survey also included children in the age group of six to nine for the first time in the fourth phase. About 55 percent of the children (6-9 years) were found to be sero-positive, while 61 percent of adolescents had COVID19 antibodies.

Among the healthcare workers, the sero-positivity was as high as 82.4 percent. The ICMR-NIN said that a large chunk of it can also be attributed to early vaccination to the frontline workers.

The ICMR strategy has been to do repeat cross-sectional sero-studies in the same geographic locations so that the infection transmission trends could be documented and studied. The first round of the sero-survey, conducted in May 2020, and the second and the third rounds were conducted in August and December 2020 in the same districts showed a sero-prevalence of 0.33 percent, 12.5 percent and 24.1 percent respectively. The seroprevalence at the national level went up from 24 percent in December 2020 to 67 percent in June 2021, however, in Telangana, it went up from 24.1 percent to 60.1 percent during the same time frame.