Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has announced that the state plans to carry out a seroprevalence study to understand the extent to which the Nipah Virus has spread. The chief minister said that the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) was not providing a clear explanation for the recurrent Nipah Virus outbreaks in Kozhikode, adding the state has decided to initiate a serosurvey. During a media briefing in Thiruvananthapuram, Pinarayi Vijayan said that he instructed the health department to prepare a comprehensive proposal for this survey.
The Chief Minister also emphasised the state government's commitment to preventing the spread of the Nipah Virus and providing improved treatment for those affected. He acknowledged that the Nipah threat was still present and expressed relief that it didn't infect many people.
He mentioned that the government was actively implementing effective measures to contain the virus and ensure the well-being of those infected. The entire state's healthcare system is dedicated to this initiative, taking the utmost precautions, he added.
What is a serosurvey?
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), population-based seroprevalence surveys are conducted to estimate the percentage of people infected by a particular disease and if they have developed immunity. These surveys help understand the disease burden, and its spread within a population and identify the risk factors associated with it. It's like a health check to understand the infection's status in a community.
How serosurvey helps
Whether people have been exposed to a certain germ:
They help us figure out how many people, across different age groups and regions, have been exposed to a particular germ over time. Whether seroprevalence provides a good estimate of exposure depends on how long the antibodies against that germ stay in our bodies. If they last a long time, seroprevalence works well. If they disappear quickly, it mainly tells us about recent exposure.
Serosurveys help find infections that don't show symptoms, assisting us in estimating how deadly the disease might be. When regular disease tracking systems are not very strong or sensitive, serosurveys can be a valuable tool for estimating how much of a disease/virus is in a population.
How many people in a group are actually infected by that germ?
Serosurveys come in handy while figuring out how common chronic infections are in a population. When someone tests seropositive for these infections, it indicates they are currently infected. So, serosurveys can help us determine how many people are currently dealing with these long-term infections.
Identifying who might lack immunity
When we connect seroprevalence (the number of people with antibodies) to immunity, serosurveys help us find gaps in immunity among different age groups, places or specific groups of people. These gaps in immunity can give us important information about outbreaks and help us decide if we should focus on vaccinating certain groups.
Serosurveys are especially handy for pinpointing immunity gaps in groups where we might not have complete vaccination data, like adults, migrants, refugees, or displaced populations.
Providing important information for modelling how infectious diseases spread
Serosurveys are valuable for figuring out important details needed for modelling infectious diseases. This includes things like how easily a disease spreads (reproductive number) and how strong the infection is. To get these numbers, scientists use the seroprevalence data broken down by age groups to create curves that show how the infection spreads in different age ranges.
(Edited by : Sudarsanan Mani)
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