MUMBAI, May 28 (NNN-PTI) – With the rising incidence of COVID-19 positive cases in Mumbai, the city will under-go sero-surveillance, to understand the geographical spread of the infection, a statement by the city’s civic authority said, Wednesday.
The objective of the study is to gain insights that will help to evolve guidelines to help prevent and control the spread of infection in communities. Sero-surveillance provides estimates of antibody levels against vaccine preventable diseases (VPD’s) and is considered the gold standard for measuring population immunity due to past infection.
The survey team will visit randomly selected households in five clusters of the city, including Asia’s largest slum, Dharavi, and capture detail history of the person, collect blood from each participant and will perform detection of SARS CoV- 2 specific IgG antibodies, which is a sign of exposure to COVID-19 infection, the statement said.
India’s financial capital Mumbai, with 33,835 positive cases and 1,097 deaths, accounted for over 22 percent and 25 percent of the cases and deaths in the country, respectively, as per the official update on Wednesday evening (last night).
Conducted by state-owned Indian Council of Medical Research, a bio-medical research body in 10 hot-spot cities of the country, with Mumbai being one of them, the survey will be steered with the help of local Medical Officer of Health teams, along with ICMR-National Institute of Immuno-Haematology teams, supported by the World Health Organisation teams.– NNN-PTI
