The number of Covid-19 cases is on a rise in India. Serosurveys are conducted nationwide to record the number of infected people in a defined population. One such serosurvey was conducted in Telangana for the second time, to test the number of actively infected people in the state on August 26 and August 27, 2020.

This survey was conducted by the Indian Council of Medical Research – National Institute of Nutrition (ICMR-NIN) in Kamareddy, Jangaon, and Nalgonda districts. It was declared that the transmission rate of the virus has slowed down.

Thirty people out of 433 people whose samples were collected, tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibodies, making it 0.9% of the total collected samples in Kamareddy district. The first round of serosurvey in this district recorded for 0.25% proportion of infected individuals.

In Jangaon, out of 454 people, only 83 tested positive for the virus. This makes it approximately 18.2% of the total samples collected. This percentage was 0.5% in May 2020, which was during the first round of the serosurvey.

Nalgonda recorded for 11.1% infected people, that is, 47 infected people out of 422. This percentile was 0.25% in May 2020 and seemed to have increased since then.

The survey was conducted following the ICMR guidelines, according to which, 10 wards or villages must be selected in each district or village. For conducting the study, any 16 households were selected randomly by the officials in these 3 districts. Individuals of the age above 10 years were tested for the survey. In total, 1309 such people were studied and tested from these districts in Telangana.

As per the NIN, even if the transmission rate is slow, many people in these districts are still susceptible to Covid-19 infection. Therefore, residents of this area must follow all the preventive measures carefully, such as wearing face masks, covering the mouth and nose while coughing or sneezing, carrying portable hand sanitizers among other steps.

The author is a student member of Amity center of Happiness.