The government on Wednesday asked states to conduct state-specific sero surveys to generate district-level data on sero-prevalence so that these findings would guide formulation of localised public health responses to manage Covid cases.
The fourth round of National Sero-Prevalence Survey done by ICMR in 70 districts of India had found antibodies in 67.6% of the population. The government said the national sero-survey by ICMR was designed to capture the extent of the spread of Covid infection at the national level so these results did not reflect the heterogeneity of sero-prevalence between districts and even between states.
Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar, Gujarat had more than 75% sero-positivity, while Maharashtra, Assam and Kerala reported below 60% sero-positivity and had a large population still vulnerable to the infection. The Union health secretary has written to all states/UTs advising to carry out sero surveys in consultation with Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) to know the sero-prevalence and utilised it for localised public health response measures.
There was a rise in daily new cases reported in the country at 43,654 cases on Wednesday. The active caseload in the country was 3,99,436. The daily positivity rate was 2.51%. India’s cumulative Covid-19 vaccination coverage reached 44.61 crore with 40 lakh vaccine doses administered in the last 24 hours.
