Dismissing general perception that a large number of people are protected from virus in the backdrop of results of recent sero-survey showing on an average 67.6 per cent of the population has been infected, AIIMS Chief Dr Randeep Guleria on Saturday said such surveys are not an indicator of herd immunity.
Dr Guleria said the importance of getting vaccinated against the disease, adding that the initial eagerness among citizens to get inoculated had “waned a little bit”. He stressed that the decline in the number of daily cases and reports of seroprevalence among a large section of the population should not be perceived as a reason not to get vaccinated.
“Sero surveys give you a rough idea, but they are not something that say that an area has [developed] herd immunity,” Guleria said. “...Irrespective of sero survey results, opt for vaccinations.”
He also expressed concern at the rising rate of reproduction rate, or R value, of Covid-19 in India from 0.96 to 1 over the past few days, saying that it is a matter of concern.
“Simply put, this means that the chances of infection spreading from a person, who has Covid, to others have gone up,” he told a news channel.
Kerala, currently the top contributor to India’s daily new infections, has an R value of around 1.11, an analysis by the Institute of Mathematical Sciences showed. This raises the risk of an even faster spread of the virus.
Dr. Srinath Reddy, President of the Public Health Foundation of India and member of the National COVID-19 Technical Taskforce too said that “there is no guarantee that seropositivity in a survey is a proof of permanent protection against fresh infection, especially when the virus is frequently changing form.