Pune: AFMC To Conduct Separate Sero Survey Among Defence Personnel
Pune, September 9, 2020: The Armed Forces Medical College (AFMC) Pune is going to conduct a sero surveillance to test if they have developed Coronavirus disease (COVID19) antibodies.
The Departments of Microbiology, Community Medicine and Internal Medicine are going to collect blood samples of armed forces personnel across the city to detect if they have circulating IgG antibodies against COVID-19.
The ongoing study has gathered 400 subjects and the results will be published after the sero survey is over according to the AFMC officials. Researchers at the AFMC told the Indian Express that the subjects between the age group of 22-55 have been selected for the survey.
According to the authorities, after the start of the pandemic, the department of microbiology, AFMC has conducted tests of more than 19,200 people. The personnel of the AFMC, their dependents, samples of civilians from Ahmednagar, Pune, Nashik, Satara and State Reserve Police Force (SRPF) were tested.
Out of the total samples, 6,160 were from Pune. Of these 6,160 samples, 995 tested positive for the COVID-19 infection. Apart from these activities, the AFMC has also taken up genomic studies to study and research on the epidemiology and the evolution of the ‘SARS-Cov-2 virus’ in collaboration with the National Centre for Cell Sciences (NCSS). 90 COVID-19 samples from Western India were collected. Samples from Pune, Satara and Nashik were collected which formed four clusters and cluster one was found to be the closest to the Wuhan sequence.
