Covid-19: As numbers rise, Rajasthan to conduct sero survey

The Rajasthan government will conduct sero survey to ascertain the extent of coronavirus infection. The decision came amid the admission that the state had entered the mild community spread stage.

Serological survey helps the government in estimating the proportion of the population that might have been exposed to the virus. This is done by checking for antibodies against Sars-CoV-2 in blood samples

Conducting sero survey in the state was one of the suggestions by country’s top doctors in an open dialogue with state’s political and bureaucratic leadership on Tuesday.

Three of country’s top doctors – Dr Naresh Trehan, chairman and managing director of Medanta-The Medicity; Dr Devi Shetty, chairman of Narayana group of hospitals; and Dr SK Sarin, director, Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences – spoke about the current Covid scenario, lauding Rajasthan government’s proactive approach in checking the spread and urging people to use mask. The experts recalled the Bhilwara model of containment as an effective early stage management protocol and use of 80,000 ‘swasthya mitras’ as effective corona warriors.

MPs, MLAs, panchayat elected representatives and common people connected themselves with this dialogue through online platforms like Facebook and YouTube. Officials said around 200,000 people were logged in to the dialogue.

The doctors stressed the need to follow health protocols to fight the pandemic and said the Covid-19 graph will start declining in four weeks if people wore masks properly. “Pandemic is fought on the ground, by people, not in hospitals. If the state government can strictly implement ‘no mask, no entry’ policy at all public places, the rate of infection will drop significantly,” said Dr Sarin.

He said Covid-19 was a type of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) and he had expanded it to S for samaj (society), A for aap (you) and RS for Rajasthan Sarkar. “These are three pillars of fighting Covid,” he said, “and the most important pillar is you, the people. The more careful we are with using masks, the earlier it will go.”

“Covid is out of control not because of inactivity of government, but because of indifference of people,” said Dr Shetty, adding that mask use can bring down Covid spread significantly. “The country must go back to work but with protection. Remember, every asymptomatic carrier can infect at least three people,” he added.

Dr Trehan said the fight against coronavirus had to be fought by three components – government, doctors and health workers, and people. “Governments have been proactive in checking the spread and doctors are fighting the pandemic in hospitals but people have become careless,” he said.

Earlier, state’s principal secretary of medical and health Akhil Arora gave an overview of the infection in Rajasthan and said the state had entered the stage of mild community spread.

He said the state’s efforts had led to lower infection and death rate than the national average. “Recovery rate in Rajasthan is 82.16%, higher than the national average of 78.29%; and the death rate in state was 1.2% against the national average of 1.64%,” he said.

Minister of state for health Subhash Garg said the state government will follow suggestions of doctors of conducting antibody survey and following the ‘no mask, no entry’ policy.

Earlier, chief minister Ashok Gehlot welcomed the three doctors and health minister Raghu Sharma spoke about the state government’s efforts towards fighting the pandemic.