Evolution of Covid-19 : Gov’t To Conduct Immunity Surveys

Researchers in Cameroon will be conducting seroprevalence surveys in the coming weeks to determine to what extent Cameroonians have been exposed and immune to the new Coronavirus. This information was made known by the Sub-Director of Disease Control at the Ministry of Public Health, Dr Linda Esso. She was speaking Tuesday, September 22, 2020 during the daily press briefing on the evolution of the Covid-19 pandemic in the country. She explained that the surveys will help the government orientate its response against Covid-19 and accentuate it in the localities where the virus continues to circulate. These surveys, Dr Linda Esso added will also reveal how patients’ bodies have responded to the virus compared to people living in other countries and continents. It should be noted that seroprevalence surveys use serology tests to identify people in a population or community that have antibodies against an infectious disease. Antibodies are specific proteins made in response to infections. 
In order to fight against the new Coronavirus, the Sub-Director of Disease Control at the Ministry of Public Health said various strategies have been mentioned or even tried in different countries. Compliance with barrier measures and confinement has been the most effective in some countries. Other countries have tried the strategy called collective immunity which aims to allow the majority of the citizens of a country to be exposed to the virus in order to produce antibodies that will fight the disease. This strategy, she said, is the one sought in particular by vaccination campaigns which affect a large number of people and induce the production of antibodies which protect them. This is the case with the vaccination against polio, which our country was recently declared healthy, Dr Esso mentioned. In the absence of the existence of an effective and available vaccine against Covid-19, the exposure of populations to the...