According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study, COVID-19 infections were six to 24 times higher than the number of cases reported at 10 other sites in the United States tested at other times of the pandemic.
In seven U.S. locations, there were more than 10 times more COVID-19 infections than the reported cases, they discovered antibody tests directed by Dr. Fiona Havers from the CDC’s COVID-19 reaction team.
“The effects would possibly reflect the number of others who have had a mild illness or no disease or who have not sought medical attention or have not been tested, but that could still have contributed to continued transmission of the virus in the population,” the researchers said. Concluded
The findings were in JAMA Internal Medicine on July 21.
The percentage of others with COVID-19 anti-coronavirus antibodies in their blood ranged from 1% in the San Francisco Bay Area to just 7% in the New York metropolitan area, based on research into blood samples collected in the past.
These figures far exceed the number of reported cases, but unfortunately they are still not broad enough to advertise collective immunity, the point at which other people are immunized rather than a virus who have not been unhealthy or vaccinated, according to an editorial accompanying the study.
“The study rebukes the idea that current population-wide levels of acquired immunity [herd immunity] will pose any substantial impediment to the continued propagation of SARS-CoV-2 in the U.S., at least for now,” wrote Dr. Tyler Brown and Dr. Rochelle Walensky, infectious disease experts at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
“The duration of the projected epidemic up to early May 2020 in this country is well below the herd immunity threshold estimated at approximately 60% to 70%; 7 of the 10 sites are recently experiencing substantial increases, not yet controlled, in the new COVID. 19 cases,” the editorialists wrote.
According to New York Times reports, there are lately more than 3.8 million reported cases of COVID-19 in the United States and just 141,000 deaths.
For the study, public fitness officials re-analyzed blood samples taken between March and May from two clinical advertising laboratories at sites across the country, looking for antibodies revealing a pre-COVID-19 infection.
They then compared the evidence of infections they found to the actual case counts reported in those areas at the time the samples were drawn.
“There has been a fact that we lost a lot of coronavirus cases throughout the pandemic, and we still are,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, lead researcher at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Safety. “This new review confirms the fact that the number of our instances is at least 10 times higher and perhaps even higher.”
What is highlighted is the desire to particularly expand coronavirus tests in the United States, the editorialists of Adalja and Boston said.
“Understanding the true burden of the disease is very vital when it comes to calculating hospitalization and mortality rates and planning for the future,” Adalja said, adding that the test “really highlights the desire to be more competitive in the diagnosis and location of other people in contact if we should always have a concept of propagation.”