ICMR-NIN to conduct rapid Covid survey in Hyderabad

The rapid survey in five randomly selected containment areas of the city will be carried out between May 30 and 31 in coordination with the State and district health authorities.

Hyderabad: The National Institute of Nutrition (NIN) in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) will conduct a rapid survey in Hyderabad to understand the SARS-CoV-2 infection among the urban population in the State.

The rapid survey in five randomly selected containment areas of the city will be carried out between May 30 and 31 in coordination with the State and district health authorities.

The SARS-CoV-2 study is part of the ICMR district level sero-surveillance survey that was taken-up in Jangaon, Kamareddy and Nalgonda wherein 1200 samples were collected for analysis in the first phase. In the first phase, ICMR completed survey in 69 districts from 21 States across the country, including three districts in Telangana, and the results are awaited.

“In the current phase, similar surveillance survey is proposed in 13 hotspot cities in India of which Hyderabad happens to be one. In the city, five containment zones have been selected randomly and 500 adults with 100 per containment zone will be randomly covered in the study,” NIN researchers said.

For the rapid survey, the State health authorities, district administrations of Hyderabad and Rangareddy, GHMC officials, district medical personnel and grassroot level health functionaries will be supporting 10 teams and five coordinators from ICMR-NIN.

“While this ends the first phase of the study, ICMR proposes to carry out four more rounds of survey in the coming months at different time points in the same rural and urban clusters. This initial phase would serve as a baseline to determine the sero-prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID19) infection in community, while the subsequent rounds would help to monitor the trends of infection among population of the select zones.

The study findings will be useful to guide in designing and implementing appropriate public health preventive measures” said Dr. R. Hemalatha, Director, ICMR-NIN who is leading the efforts.

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