Government releases District level guidelines for Covid-19 surveillance

Team Udayavani, May 14, 2020, 2:15 PM IST

Government of India has released a set of guidelines for the district level to establish systematic surveillance to fight the pandemic

ICMR/NCDC in collaboration with key stakeholders and state health departments is initiating a population based sero-survey in selected districts representing the case detection across the country.

The objective is to monitor the trend in prevalence of Covid-19 infection at district level

According to the guidelines, From each district, 10 health facilities including 6 public and 4 private health facilities should be selected.

Health Ministry has asked the districts to test 100 samples per week to low-risk outpatient attendees and pregnant women and high-risk populations like healthcare workers. It is said that in addition to throat/nasal swabs, blood samples should be collected for detecting IgG antibodies for ELISA testing.

Also, throat/nasal swabs will be tested in a one time pool of 25. But the results of these samples will be used exclusively for surveillance purposes and not for the diagnosis of individual patients.

Serosurvey involves testing samples who have not been infected to Covid-19 previously, which  will help the authorities to check if the community was infected with the virus.