Less than 1 pc people got virus in early days: India’s maiden COVID trend survey

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, June 11

India’s maiden population based survey on COVID-19 transmission trends has shown that less than one per cent of the people contracted the virus until April 30 in signs that the national lockdown succeeded in keeping the disease low and preventing the rapid spread of the virus.

ICMR’s sero surveillance (blood sample based study) found coronavirus prevalence in the community at 0.73 per cent. The sample for the study consisted of 26,400 people across 28,595 households in 83 districts.

The virus prevalence was the lowest in rural areas. Urban slums were found to be the most at risk with 1.85 times higher COVID-19 prevalence than rural areas while urban centres reported a prevalence that was 1.09 times higher than in villages.

Though the prevalence in people was found to be low, the survey also indicated that large sections of Indian people were still susceptible to the virus with densely populated urban slums most vulnerable.

DG ICMR Balram Bhargava while analysing the data said, “Around 0.73 per cent people in the 83 districts we studied showed prevalence of past exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 virus which means the lockdown in initial days kept the disease low and checked a rapid viral spread. The survey findings also show large proportions of population are still susceptible to the virus. Another good news is that infection fatality rate in the 83 districts was very low at 0.08 per cent.”

Bhargava said the way forward was strict adherence to non-pharmacological interventions like physical distancing, masks and face covers, respiratory and hand hygiene.

He also said the state governments cannot lower the guard at the moment.

“Infection in containment zones has been found to be high, and therefore, local lockdown measures need to continue. The states cannot lower their guard and need to keep implementing effective surveillance and containment strategy,” said DG ICMR.

Pointing to low COVID prevalence, Bhargava also said there was no community transmission of COVID-19 in India.

Sero surveillance by ICMR tested blood samples from individuals to see if the samples contained antibodies to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Presence of antibodies is a sign of past infection.

Putting the data in perspective, Member Health, NITI Aayog, VK Paul said, “Less than 1 per cent people had past infection as shown by the survey which presents the picture till April 30. The survey was done in the third week of May and normally antibodies take 15 days to appear.”

The experts said India was showing clearly low mortality rate and recoveries had now touched 49.12 per cent with more people cured than currently infected.

Bhargava also said there was ample testing capacity in the country at two lakh samples a day and it remained under-utilised. He urged states to ramp up testing.

More surveys are in the pipeline, said Bhagrava adding that the second part of the sero survey will detect COVID prevalence in hot spots to provide guidance to states and tell them where they need to focus more.

The tests were done using ICMR developed indigenous antibody testing kit Elisa.