While the state continued to register not less than 10,000 cases, Andhra Pradesh government which claims to maintain transparency in COVID numbers ramped up with the new strategies. Reportedly, the health officials have decided to carry out a sero-surveillance in the state to take the stock of situation across the districts.
Followed by states like Maharastra and Delhi has been successfully deploying this survey which is serving as important data to guide Covid-19 containment strategies, Andhra Pradesh becomes the third stage to implement this strategy.
But what is this technique and how does it help the governments to deal with the pandemic..?
Sero-surveillance is the survey technique that aims at detecting antibody levels against the virus to measure the population’s immunity to its past infection. This has been the most trusted standard method globally which measures the level of antibodies in people due to a certain infection.
As the part of which, samples will be collected from north-east, north-west, south-east and also south-west regions of the selected districts or regions. Only one house can be chosen from ten houses in a locality.
The samples will be further carefully tested and the infection pattern will be observed to confirm the infection and immunity rate in the state.
How will Andhra Carry out this technique..?
Krishna, East Godavari, Anantapur and Nellore have been chosen to cover all the regions in the state, while the officials are planning to collect 3750 samples from each of the four districts. 70% will be from rural areas and 30% from the urban areas.
According to Dr K Rambabu, General Physician and Professor of Medicine, the whole process would take 7-10 days while necessary epidemiologists, statisticians and other experts were recruited.
