Open AccessNational sero-surveillance to monitor the trend of SARS-CoV-2 infection transmission in India: Protocol for community-based surveillance
Author(s) -
Muthusamy Santhosh Kumar,
Tarun Bhatnagar,
Manickam Ponnaiah,
Velusamy Saravana Kumar,
Kiran Rade,
Naman K. Shah,
Shashi Kant,
Giridhara R Babu,
Sanjay Zodpey,
C P Girish Kumar,
Jeromie Wesley Vivian Thangaraj,
Pranab Chatterjee,
Suman Kanungo,
Ravindra Mohan Pandey,
Manoj Murhekar,
Sujeet Kumar Singh,
Swarup Sarkar,
J P Muliyi,
Raman Gangakhedkar,
D. C. S. Reddy
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
indian journal of medical research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.578
H-Index - 87
ISSN - 0971-5916
DOI - 10.4103/ijmr.ijmr_1818_20
Subject(s) - seroprevalence , medicine , population , demography , covid-19 , environmental health , transmission (telecommunications) , incidence (geometry) , geography , disease , serology , immunology , infectious disease (medical specialty) , antibody , pathology , physics , optics , sociology , electrical engineering , engineering
Conducting population-based serosurveillance for severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) will estimate and monitor the trend of infection in the adult general population, determine the socio-demographic risk factors and delineate the geographical spread of the infection. For this purpose, a serial cross-sectional survey would be conducted with a sample size of 24,000 distributed equally across four strata of districts categorized on the basis of the incidence of reported cases of COVID-19. Sixty districts will be included in the survey. Simultaneously, the survey will be done in 10 high-burden hotspot cities. ELISA-based antibody tests would be used. Data collection will be done using a mobile-based application. Prevalence from the group of districts in each of the four strata will be pooled to estimate the population prevalence of COVID-19 infection, and similarly for the hotspot cities, after adjusting for demographic characteristics and antibody test performance. The total number of reported cases in the districts and hotspot cities will be adjusted using this seroprevalence to estimate the expected number of infected individuals in the area. Such serosurveys repeated at regular intervals can also guide containment measures in respective areas. State-specific context of disease burden, priorities and resources should guide the use of multifarious surveillance options for the current COVID-19 epidemic.