A CORRESPONDENT
NEW DELHI: Three districts from Assam including Udalguri, Kamrup Metropolitan and Karbi Anglong have been selected for an exclusive community survey to trace the presence of SARS-CoV-2 (Covid19) infection. New Delhi based Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), in collaboration with Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and National Centre for Disease Control with support from State health departments and key stakeholders including WHO, is conducting the community based sero-survey
Significantly, Assam is the only State from Northeast which has been included for the community survey along with 66 more districts from 20 other States across India. Sources in ICMR said that the survey is coordinated by ICMR's National Institute of Epidemiology (NIE) and National Institute of Research in Tuberculosis (NIRT), Chennai. This household level cross-sectional survey will cover 24,000 adults distributed equally across four strata of districts, categorized on the basis of reported cases of COVID-19.
"The survey will involve collection of various blood samples from 400 randomly selected individuals (one per household) from 10 clusters in each district. Sera from these individuals will be tested for presence of IgG antibodies using ELISA test developed by ICMR-National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune. The results of the survey will provide information about spread of SARS-CoV-2 infection in different parts of the country,"sources said. Besides this community-based survey, Ministry of Health is also initiating hospital-based surveillance to monitor the trend of infection in all districts.