Hyderabad: Amidst the despondency caused by ever-increasing Coronavirus cases and deaths in Telangana, the state has received some good news, the health department has said, citing the results of a serological survey conducted by ICMR which indicated that there was no community transmission of Covid-19 in Telangana.
Releasing the results, the office of health minister Etala Rajendar said that the sero survey found only 0.2 per cent of Coronavirus infections in samples collected from rural Telangana state while in samples collected from urban areas, the positive rate was only three per cent. While a total of 1,200 samples were collected in rural areas from Jangaon, Kamareddy and Nalgonda districts from which only 4 were found to be carrying Coronavirus antibodies, in the 500 samples collected from five containment zones in Adibhatla, Tappachabutra, Miyapur, Chandanagar and Balangar in Hyderabad and its environs, only 15 cases were found to be positive. A sero survey is designed to find presence of antibodies for any particular infection and reflects past infections among a given population.
A press release said that Rajendar credited the absence of community transmission of Covid-19 in Telangana state to proper implementation of the lockdown in the state by Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao.
While the evidence of absence of community transmission as per the ICMR-NIN sero survey might come as some good news, it also points to the fact that among the rural population in Telangana, a whopping 99.8 per cent of people remain vulnerable to Cononavirus infections. And in urban areas, 97 per cent of the state’s population also remains vulnerable to Covid-19.
