Estimation of real-infection and immunity against SARS-CoV-2 in Indian populations

ABSTRACT

Infection born by Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has swept the world within a time of a few months. It has created a devastating effect on humanity with social and economic depression. Europe and America were the hardest hit continents. India has also lost lives, making the country fourth most deadly worldwide. However, the infection and death rate per million and the case fatality ratio in India were substantially lower than in many developed nations. Several factors have been proposed including genetics. One of the important facts is that a large chunk of Indian population is asymptomatic to the SARS-CoV-2 infection. Thus, the real infection in India is much higher than the reported number of cases. Therefore, the majority of people are already immune in the country. To understand the dynamics of real infection as well as the level of immunity against SARS-CoV-2, we have performed antibody testing (serosurveillance) in the urban region of fourteen Indian districts encompassing six states. In our survey, the seroprevalence frequency varied between 0.01-0.48, suggesting high variability of viral transmission between states. We also found out that the cases reported by the government were several fold lower than the real incidence of infection. This discrepancy is mainly driven by the higher number of asymptomatic cases. Overall, we suggest that with the high level of immunity developed against SARS-CoV-2 in the majority of the districts, the case fatality rate of second wave in India will be minor than first wave.