VIJAYAWADA: Serosurveillance — which estimates the presence of antibodies against an infectious disease and measures a population’s immunity to the infection — has begun in four districts of Andhra Pradesh.
Announcing this on Saturday, Special Chief Secretary (Health) Dr KS Jawahar Reddy said, “We have started serosurveillance in Krishna, East Godavari, Anantapur and Nellore districts, and 3,750 samples will be collected from each district.Immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibody tests will be done by the Chemiluminescence immunoassay (CLIA) method.”
Of the 21,000 samples collected for serosurveillance in Delhi in June, 23.5 per cent had antibodies, while in Mumbai, 57 per cent of the 7,000 samples collected had antibodies, he added. “This means 23.5 per cent of Delhi’s population contracted the virus and had already recovered, even without their knowledge,” Jawahar Reddy told the media.
Even if serosurveillance reveals a high prevalence of antibodies, it does not mean people in the region are infected and spreading the virus. Rather, it means they have recovered and don’t pose a threat, he asserted, and emphasised that there is no need to worry.
Commenting on the sudden increase in the number of COVID-19 cases in the past few days, he said, “As per the coronavirus curve, four districts — East Godavari, West Godavari, Kurnool and Anantapur — are witnessing their peak, so they have reported a huge number of cases of late. But as expected, not all districts are witnessing a peak at the same time, which is helping us use our resources better, as anticipated.”
Further, he said that though the COVID-19 situation looks grim now, there is nothing abnormal. “The virus entered the state about five months ago. It is absolutely normal to be at a peak at this stage. Other states went through their peak stages after about the same amount of time since the virus started spreading there,” explained Jawahar Reddy.
On the State government’s strategy to deal with the pandemic, he stated the aim is now to reduce the mortality rate. “In May, the positivity rate was barely over one per cent. It increased to 2.16 per cent in June after Unlock-1, to 12.33 per cent in July after Unlock-2, and stands at 16.24 per cent in August (till Friday) after Unlock-3,” he said. As the rate increased, more people were losing their lives as they were being diagnosed and hospitalised late, resulting in less time to be treated.
“People have been losing their lives on the day of admission or within three days of being admitted to hospital as they are being diagnosed late. We are taking steps to fix this and ensure lives are saved,” said Jawahar Reddy. Towards this end, he said a three-level plan is being implemented.
“The first level is admitting anyone with fever, breathlessness and oxygen saturation levels below 94 per cent for three-four consecutive days to be admitted even before their COVID-19 test results are out. This will give doctors at least six days to treat them, which is the second level, under which we will try to give doctors as much time as possible to treat patients. The last step is to ensure no patient succumbs to the virus unless he/she is on ventilator support. The last attempt to save patients should be to put them on ventilators. Nobody should die in the general ward or when on oxygen,” he explained. He explained that people can dial 14410 to consult a doctor over the phone. These calls will be diverted to ‘104’ services.
‘Nothing abnormal about spike in cases’
“The virus entered the state about five months ago. It is absolutely normal to be at a peak at this stage. Other states went through their peak after about the same amount of time since the virus started spreading there,” Jawahar Reddy said