Realtime Supervision and Quality Assessment of Statewide Community based Sero-Surveillance for Anti-Sars-Cov-2 IgG Antibodies

Realtime Supervision for Sero-Surveillance of COVID 19

Abstract

Introduction: By the year 2020, there was need to know the number of cases of COVID-19, either through modelling studies or through sero-prevalence of anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibodies. Haryrana govt. decided to undertake statewide community based serosurveillance in all the districts. Quality serosurveillance requires robust quality control mechanism. In this study, we present a model of supportive supervision for quality control of sero-prevalence survey for anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibodies that was used for Haryana sero-surveillance.

Methodology: Teams from Haryana, under the guidance of investigators conducted Seroprevalence survey for anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibodies in all 22 districts of Haryana from 17^th to 19^th August 2020. Team of investigators from independent tertiary care institute conducted realtime supervision using online mobile app ‘Survey Man’ with GPS feature. Each survey team visited conveniently selected surveillance sites in each district and associated district laboratory. Each site was graded based on the sum of the scores obtained by team during supervision for quality assessment.

Results: Team visited 13 clusters in 8 districts, and observed 28 teams in the community and 4 district laboratories. Most of the clusters (92%), and all laboratories were graded satisfactory (score 8 or above). There was intra and inter district variation in the randomization technique in selecting the study sample. The teams in some clusters were having trouble in interpreting the grid table that was used to select individuals in the families for surveillance.

Conclusion: App-based, real-time monitoring, along with GPS was successfully used for monitoring the quality of community based sero-surveillance as well as for the large population based studies.