India News | With 28k Samples, Latest Covid Serosurvey in Delhi to Be Largest Exercise: Satyendar Jain

New Delhi, Sep 25 (PTI) In total 28,000 samples will be collected for the latest Covid serosurvey, making it the largest exercise in the national capital that seeks to determine the prevalence of antibodies among the populace, Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain said on Saturday.

The survey got underway on Friday amid fewer COVID-19 cases being reported in the city for many weeks now.

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According to sources, vaccination history will be collected from the participants of the survey. A large segment of the city population has already received anti-coronavirus vaccine doses.

The previous survey was conducted a few months ago when Delhi was reeling under the brutal second wave of the pandemic. The exercise was impacted by the second wave and its results were not officially published by the authorities.

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The city government has termed the latest round of the sero-survey as the "sixth" in the series.

Jain on Saturday told reporters that a total of 28,000 samples will be collected as part of the "sixth round of the serological survey".

"Delhi has 272 municipal wards, plus eight under the Delhi Cantonment Board. From each of these wards, 100 samples will be collected. So, it will be by far the largest such exercise," he said.

The samples will be collected in a week. It will take another week to prepare the report, Jain added.

The Delhi Health Department, in a statement, said, "It is one of the biggest serological surveys and we are hoping for a more accurate and positive report after the survey is over."

Jain said that experts expect to find high seropositivity in this survey.

Also, the exercise is taking place at a time when a large segment of the population has been vaccinated against COVID-19.

Delhi has a population of over 2 crore spread across 11 districts.

According to Delhi's vaccination bulletin issued on Friday, over 1.67 crore doses have been administered to date and it includes over 1.1 crore first doses and over 51 lakh second doses.

The fifth sero-survey, which was conducted earlier this year, found that over 56 per cent of Delhi's population was exposed to Covid. As part of the survey which had ended around January 21, samples were collected from over 25,000 people from various districts across the city.

Experts say herd immunity is said to have been developed in a population segment if 50-60 per cent are found to have the presence of anti-bodies in a seroprevalence survey.

The first seroprevalence survey conducted last year from June 27-July 10 by the Delhi government in association with the National Centre for Disease Control, had used 21,387 samples and found that around 23 per cent of the people surveyed had exposure to the novel coronavirus.

The exercise in August 2020 showed 29.1 per cent of people had coronavirus antibodies. In the surveys of September and October last year the figures stood at 25.1 per cent and 25.5 per cent respectively.

The exercises have been undertaken for a comprehensive assessment of the COVID-19 situation in Delhi and to formulate strategies based on its findings.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)