Picture : Twitter / ANI
Unveiling the results of the sero survey, 56% people in Delhi have Corona antibodies. This means that more than half of the Delhi’s population infected with the virus have now recovered. Delhi’s Health Minister, Satyendar Jain left it to the experts to decide whether the city has developed herd immunity since the survey numbers are very close to it. According to the experts, seroprevelance in 50% – 60% or more in population indicates herd immunity since the chain of transmission is broken thereby diminishing the spread of disease.
The South East district has the highest seroprevelance of 62.2% while the North has the lowest of 49.1%. The current fifth round of survey have reported more the 49% seroprevalence. This was the country’s largest sero survey for which 28,000 samples were collected from 272 wards of the capital in January. The survey further reveals that females have more seroprevalence than the males. Jain added, “Covid cases have come down considerably and have been lower than 200 for the past 10-12 days. Positivity rate has been lower than 1% for the past one month. I want to request everyone to wear mask, despite lower Covid cases, a declining positivity rate and fewer patients in the hospitals. In the past three months, people of Delhi have carefully followed Covid-appropriate protocols”.
Meanwhile, frontline workers like police personnel and sanitation workers are likely to start getting vaccination from this week onwards. Approximately 3.5 workers out of 6 lakh have been registered for getting the shots. So far, nearly 74,000 healthcare workers have been inoculated.
According to Dr Sanjay Rai, professor at AIIMS, “it is highly unlikely that we will have another major outbreak in Delhi now. People have developed antibodies through natural infection and it is likely to protect them from infections and severe symptoms for some time. But mass immunization was still a necessity”.
