ABSTRACT
Repeated serological testing tells about the change in the overall infection in a community. This study aimed to evaluate changes in antibody prevalence and kinetics in a closed cohort over six months in different sub-populations in India. The study included 10,000 participants from rural and urban areas in five states and measured SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in serum in three follow-up rounds. The overall seroprevalence increased from 73.9% in round one to 90.7% in round two and 92.9% in round three. Among seropositive rural participants in round one, 98.2% remained positive in round two, and this percentage remained stable in urban and tribal areas in round three. The results showed high antibody prevalence that increased over time and was not different based on area, age group, or sex. Vaccinated individuals had higher antibody prevalence, and nearly all participants had antibody positivity for up to six months.
ABSTRACT
Background Several methodological tests are available to detect SARS-CoV-2 antibody. Tests are mostly used in the aid of diagnosis or for serological assessment. No tests are fully confirmatory and have variable level of diagnostic ability. We aimed at assessing agreement with three serological tests: quantitative anti receptor binding domain ELISA (Q-RBD), qualitative ELISA (WANTAI SARS-CoV-2 Ab) and qualitative chemiluminiscence assays (CLIA).Methods This study was a part of a large population based sero-epidemiological cohort study. Participants aged 1 year or older were included from 25 randomly selected clusters each in Delhi urban (urban resettlement colony of South Delhi district) and Delhi rural (villages in Faridabad district, Haryana). Three type of tests were applied to all the baseline blood samples. Result of the three tests were evaluated by estimating the total agreement and kappa value.Results Total 3491 blood samples collected from March to September, 2021, out of which 1700 (48.7%) from urban and 1791 (51.3%) from rural. Overall 44.1% of participants were male. The proportion of sero-positivity were 78.1%, 74.1% and 31.8% by Wantai, QRBD and CLIA tests respectively. The total agreement between Wantai and QRBD was 94.2%, 53.1% between Wantai and CLIA, and 56.6% between QRBD and CLIA. The kappa value between these three tests were 0.84 (95% CI: 0.80–0.87), 0.22 (95% CI: 0.19–0.24) and 0.26 (95% CI: 0.23–0.28).Conclusions There was strong concordance between Wantai and QRBD test. Agreement between CLIA with other two tests was low. Wantai and QRBD may be used interchangeably.