Symptomatic survey of COVID-19 in the rural health and demographic surveillance site of Maharashtra, India.

Abstract

The COVID-19 epidemic is fast-evolving and restrictions to contain it changes quickly. The secondary attack rate (SAR) indicates the infectiousness at the household level, and it provides a clue of load of infections in the community. Rapid implementation of a large scale, but brief survey provides a nationally representative view of the pandemic's progression and impact as well as the effect of the measures taken to control the spread. This cross-sectional study was done for a period of 2 months July-August 2020, in one of the rural health and demographic surveillance system (HDSS) site in India among 11,507 households having 46,571 individuals with the objective to determine the prevalence of the COVID-19 infection and to estimate the family SAR. The data were collected using the mobile phone by calling the head of the households registered under the HDSS. The research tool was created using questions based on the guidelines provided by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, India. The interviewers were first trained in data collection. The households of 33,780 individuals were contacted and 33 patients were diagnosed as COVID positive, prevalence rate of 0.1% was thus documented through telephonic survey. The mean age of COVID patients was found to be 37 ± 16 years, and 63% of the diagnosed patients were males, majority of them belonged to above poverty line households. During the survey, 46 individuals reported to have the symptoms suggestive of COVID, fever and cough were the most commonly reported symptoms. The family SAR of 17.2% was documented. Thus to conclude a low COVID-19 prevalence rate of 0.1%, a higher family SAR of 17.2% was reported in the current study. Timely diagnosis and quarantine of close contacts should be continued to be implemented rigorously to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus. These efforts will be useful to contain the epidemic before it reaches an alarming level in the rural areas.