Insights from a Pan India Sero-Epidemiological survey (Phenome-India Cohort) for SARS-CoV2
Salwa Naushin, Viren Sardana, Rajat Ujjainiya, Nitin Bhatheja, Rintu Kutum, Akash Kumar Bhaskar, Shalini Pradhan, Satyartha Prakash, Raju Khan, Birendra Singh Rawat, Karthik Bharadwaj Tallapaka, Mahesh Anumalla, Giriraj R. Chandak, Amit Lahiri, S.K. Kar, Shrikant R. Mulay, Madhav Nilakanth Mugale, Mrigank Srivastava, Shaziya Khan, Anjali Srivastava, Bhawana Tomar, Murugan Veerapandian, Ganesh Venkatachalam, Selvamani Raja Vijayakumar, Ajay Agarwal, Dinesh Gupta, Prakash M. Halami, Muthukumar Serva Peddha, Gopinath M. Sundaram, Ravindra P. Veeranna, Anirban Pal, Vinay Agarwal, Anil Ku Maurya, Ranvijay Singh, Ashok Kumar Raman, Suresh Kumar Anandasadagopan, Parimala Karuppanan, Subramanian Venkatesan, H. K. Sardana, Anamika Kothari, Rishabh Jain, Anupma Thakur, Devendra Singh Parihar, Anas Saifi, Jasleen Kaur, Virendra Kumar, Avinash Mishra, Iranna Gogeri, Geethavani Rayasam, Praveen Singh, Rahul Chakraborty, Gaura Chaturvedi, Pinreddy Karunakar, Rohit Yadav, Sunanda Singhmar, Dayanidhi Singh, Sharmistha Sarkar, Purbasha Bhattacharya, Sundaram Acharya, Vandana Singh, Shweta Jain Verma, Drishti Soni, Surabhi Seth, Sakshi Vashisht, Sarita Thakran, Firdaus Fatima, Akash Pratap Singh, Akanksha Sharma, Babita Sharma, Manikandan Subramanian, Yogendra Padwad, Vipin Hallan, Vikram Patial, Damanpreet Singh, Narendra Vijay Tripude, Partha Chakrabarti, Sujay Krishna Maity, Dipyaman Ganguly, Jit Sarkar, Ramakrishna Sistla, Balthu Narender Kumar, Kiran A. Kumar, Sumit G. Gandhi, Piyush Singh Jamwal, Rekha Chouhan, Vijay Lakshmi Jamwal, Nitika Kapoor, Debashish Ghosh, Ghanshyam Thakkar, Umakanta Subudhi, Pradip Sen, Saumya Ray Chaudhury, Rashmi Kumar, Pawan Gupta, Amit Tuli, Deepak Sharma, Rajesh P. Ringe, D Amarnarayan, Mahesh J. Kulkarni, Dhansekaran Shanmugam
Abstract
To understand the spread of SARS-CoV2, in August and September 2020, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (India) conducted a serosurvey across its constituent laboratories and centers across India. Of 10,427 volunteers, 1058 (10.14%) tested positive for SARS-CoV2 anti-nucleocapsid (anti-NC) antibodies, 95% of which had surrogate neutralization activity. Three-fourth of these recalled no symptoms. Repeat serology tests at 3 (n = 607) and 6 (n = 175) months showed stable anti-NC antibodies but declining neutralization activity. Local seropositivity was higher in densely populated cities and was inversely correlated with a 30-day change in regional test positivity rates (TPRs). Regional seropositivity above 10% was associated with declining TPR. Personal factors associated with higher odds of seropositivity were high-exposure work (odds ratio, 95% confidence interval, p value: 2.23, 1.92-2.59, <0.0001), use of public transport (1.79, 1.43-2.24, <0.0001), not smoking (1.52, 1.16-1.99, 0.0257), non-vegetarian diet (1.67, 1.41-1.99, <0.0001), and B blood group (1.36, 1.15-1.61, 0.001).