Adoption of the population-based sero-epidemiological protocol to effectively respond to the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic

Abstract

The ongoing Coronavirus Disease-2019 (COVID-19) outbreak has been declared as a pandemic and has created a global public health concern. The primary reason due to which COVID-19 outbreak became a public health emergency of international concern was its novel nature. In order to enhance our understanding about the novel infection, five epidemiological protocols have been already developed and the World Health Organization has designed another protocol to conduct investigations pertaining to the disease on the basis of the population and age-stratification. It is expected that this protocol will aid in knowing about the magnitude of the infection in the community, age-specific incidence, infection attack rate, case fatality ratio, ratio of severe disease, detection of high-risk population groups, and the proportion of people having an asymptomatic infection. In conclusion, the adoption of the recently formulated epidemiological protocol by the nation's public health authorities will be a significant step in shaping the battle of mankind against the COVID-19 disease. The protocol will enable the standardized collection of information and thus will help us in understanding crucial clinical, virological and epidemiological attributes of the novel infection.