E-Paper
After Delhi's 5th serosurvey, health minister Jain says don’t let guard down
“We should not get into discussions over herd immunity. Everyone should follow Covid-19 appropriate behaviour including wearing masks & sanitizing hands regularly,” Jain said.
Delhi health minister Satyendar Jain said on Tuesday people should continue wearing masks and maintain Covid-19 appropriate behaviour even though more than half of the residents of the national capital exposed to coronavirus were found to have developed antibodies against it during the fifth serosurvey. The survey in the Capital showed that as many as 56.13% of the 28,000 people sampled were found to have developed antibodies against Sars-Cov-2.
“We should not get into discussions over herd immunity. Everyone should follow Covid-19 appropriate behaviour including wearing masks and sanitising hands regularly,” Jain said.
The health minister also said that there is no clear yardstick to define the term ‘herd immunity’. “Some say herd immunity is achieved at 50%, others say it should be 60%. I don’t think we should get into the debate of herd immunity now. This is a new form of virus or disease, we should not loosen our precautionary measures because in October we had thought the virus was brought under control, but then we got the third wave,” said Jain.
Herd immunity is when enough people have immunity to a disease so that the disease leaves very few vulnerable people for it to spread to, slowing the outbreak. In the case of coronavirus, experts believe that herd immunity will be achieved when 60-80 per cent of the population is immune to the virus.
This was the fifth serosurvey conducted in the national capital and the largest in the country so far. The survey was conducted from January 15 to January 23.
On Monday, the national capital reported 121 new Covid-19 cases and three deaths, the lowest in the last 10 months. Only 32 Covid-19 patients needed hospitalisation which was also the lowest in the last 10 months. With this, the death count mounted to 10,856 and the Covid-19 case tally count in the city rose to 6,35,217.
