Delhi, from today, will carry out the mammoth serological test of 20,000 people for novel Coronavirus amid a spike in cases in the national capital. The survey will continue till July 10.
This is done to undertake a comprehensive analysis of COVID-19 and prepare a broad strategy to combat the pandemic.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah, for the third time last week, reviewed the Coronavirus situation in Delhi on Sunday with Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal and discussed recommendations made by Dr Vinod Paul committee on strategy to curb the spread of COVID-19 in the national capital.
At the virtual meeting it was decided that Delhi will conduct serological test of 20,000 samples from June 27.
“To adopt a comprehensive policy for Delhi, the government will conduct random serological test of 20 thousand people starting from June 27 to July 10,” said a statement from Ministry of Home Affairs.
The exercise will be jointly taken up by the Delhi government and the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC).
“As per the directives of HM @AmitShah, discussion was done on the serological survey in Delhi, which will be carried out jointly by NCDC and Delhi Government.
“Survey will begin from June 27, training of all the concerned survey teams was completed yesterday,” a home ministry spokesperson tweeted on Friday.
Serological test or sero-surveillance is a diagnostic method used to identify antibodies present in our immunity systems when we get infected with the virus.
These types of tests are used for surveillance among communities and can be used on people who have already contracted coronavirus. So if someone has not tested positive in the past but had COVID-19, the survey would find out.
“Depending upon the level of seroprevalence of infection, appropriate public health interventions can be planned and implemented for prevention and control of the disease. Periodic serosurveys are useful to guide policymakers,” an official of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) had said earlier.
Delhi has 77,240 infections so far and 2,492 people have died due to the virus.