On August 20, 2020, Delhi’s second serological survey, conducted between August 1 and 7, sampled 15,000 people, and found that 29.1 per cent of the city’s residents have developed antibodies against Covid-19. It means that around 5.8 million people in the city have been infected with Sars-CoV-2 at some point. It is 6.2 per cent more from the first sero survey, a month ago, which showed 22.86 per cent people had developed antibodies.
The proportion of infected has been extremely varied in the different sero surveys conducted so far. Much of this variation may be due to sizes and sampling region within these cities. With sample size 1,664, officials found that 51 per cent of people had the antibodies earlier this week in Pune. In Mumbai, this number was 40 per cent at the end of July with sample size 6,936. And in Ahmedabad, 17.61 per cent people out of 30,054, exhibited seroprevalence at the end of July.
Positive aspect: The findings show that deaths have been lower than feared, and herd immunity is around the corner.
Somewhat negative aspect: Testing has been woefully inadequate. There were 142,723 confirmed cases on the day the sero survey ended. If 5.8 million people had been infected by August 7, then the testing strategy managed to only identify less than 2.5 per cent of those infected. It means it missed over 5.6 million infections, most of whom were probably asymptomatic.
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