Surveys now point to the fact COVID-19 is wreaking havoc around the world, including India may be reaching a stage of Herd Immunity.
A sero-survey, conducted by the Centre in Delhi, has indicated that around one-fourth of the national capital has been exposed to the #novelcoronavirus so far. And according to experts, it is a good thing.
The sero-survey or sero-prevalence study involves testing of blood serum of individuals to check for the prevalence of antibodies against infection. In Delhi, the survey was conducted by the National Centre for Disease Control in collaboration with the Delhi government on 21,387 samples between June 27 and July 10.
The survey report showed that around 23 per cent of the people tested had exposure to the novel coronavirus in the city. Going by Delhi’s estimated population of 1.9 crore, this puts the total number of Covid-19 cases in Delhi at over 4 million, much higher than the reported figure of 1.23 lakh cases.
According to health experts, the vast difference between the number of people who tested positive for Covid-19 in Delhi and those who are found to have anti-bodies shows that a large number of people were affected by the virus and attained immunity without any need of medical attention.
#covidvaccine #immunitypower #immunitypowertest
This, expert say, is proof that India is hurtling towards herd immunity.
Only around six per cent of Delhi’s population tested positive for novel coronavirus, but one-fourth of Delhi got immunity. This is herd immunity. These people have immunity even without getting a vaccine. Even as these self-acquired anti-bodies are yet to be titrated, their presence means that these people were infected and managed to clear the virus,”.
A study by private lab chain Thyrocare is also raising hopes, indicating that crores of Indians may already be immune to the coronavirus. With the approval of the Indian Council for Medical Research, Thyrocare conducted 60,000 antibody tests across 600 pin codes in different parts of India.
Out of these, it recently released data for 53,000 samples, showing that about 15% of people have already developed antibodies against the novel coronavirus — after getting infected and recovering from it, without major symptoms, sometime in the past.
Antibodies are the proteins that the human immune system produces (secreted by cells called B lymphocytes) to fight off dangerous viruses like the novel coronavirus. They are generated in response to a new infection and remain in the blood to prevent re-infection, thereby giving immunity.
This means 18 crore are already immunized In a series of tweets revealing the test data, Dr. Arokiaswamy Velumani, the Founder and MD of Thyrocare, noted that their results may have a variation of plus/minus 3%. However, he said, these findings indicate that 15% of India, or about 18 crore people could have silent antibody-based protection from COVID-19
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