Centre asks states to ramp up COVID-19 surveillance as cases surge

Active COVID-19 cases in India have been rising for the last 37 days and have now reached 99,602 after falling below 10,000 mark

Sumi Sukanya Dutta

June 29, 2022 / 19:32 IST

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The Union health ministry, on June 29, issued fresh guidelines on COVID-19 surveillance in the country saying that sewage or wastewater surveillance should be carried out in states and samples from large outbreaks should be subjected to whole genome sequencing.

The guidelines come in the wake of fresh surge in coronavirus infections being reported from parts of the country over the last six weeks.

In a letter written to the health secretaries of the states, Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan wrote that there should be random screening of 2 percent of all international passengers coming to India using RTPCR.

The specimen from the positive samples should be mandatorily sent for genomic surveillance, he stressed.

The letter also said that all healthcare facilities should report influenza-like illnesses to the Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP) and district surveillance office would be responsible to analyse the data and a proportion—5 percent- of such ILI cases should be tested through RTPCR.

COVID-19 Vaccine

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

How many types of vaccines are there?

There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?

Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.

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