Pune: The epidemiologists who conducted the serological studies in the city have expressed their inability to comment on whether asymptomatic persons are spreading the coronavirus infection in the city. The experts said that at this point of time that 'evidence says the jury is still out' and that nothing can be said about it.
The serosurvey was conducted by experts from Indian Institute of Science, Education and Research (IISER) along with Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU), Translational Health Science and Technology Institute (THSTI) of Faridabad.
IISER's Prof Shashidhar and Prof Arnab Ghosh said, "Looks like all major cities are having a significant spread of infection and that a large proportion of the population is being tested. However, it is not unusual that most of the persons we identified as positive were asymptomatic. We still do not have a clear picture of how many people are affected by COVID-19 in the city. The number of COVID-positives in Pune are still high."
"We are doing the study and it will take some time and a lot of extrapolation needs to be done before we arrive at a conclusion. We can't make any claim about herd immunity now. Nothing can be said about whether these asymptomatic patients are actually spreading the coronavirus or not as the antibodies generation and prevalence time cannot be estimated at this stage. Experts from the UK and Wuhan are also conducting studies about the efficacy of these developed antibodies against the future infection," they said.
Divisional Commissioner Saurabh Rao said, "The R nought factor which determines the infection spread from one infected person to others is declining in the city. On July 30 the R nought factor was 1 in Pune Municipal Corporation area which has come down to 0.7 as of today. In Mumbai, during the corresponding period, the R Naught was 0.9 and 0.1 respectively. That means in Pune city the spread of infection will come in the next two to three weeks."
