The Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) has published their findings of a new study today that claims the infection rate of COVID-19 amongst Americans may be 10 times greater than previously reported.
The main purpose of the study sought to answer the question: “What proportion of persons in 10 US sites had detectable antibodies to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) from March 23 to May 12, 2020?”.
The study took sample data from 10 cities and found the following:
“ In this cross-sectional study of 16 025 residual clinical specimens, estimates of the proportion of persons with detectable SARS-CoV-2 antibodies ranged from 1.0% in the San Francisco Bay area (collected April 23-27) to 6.9% of persons in New York City (collected March 23-April 1). Six to 24 times more infections were estimated per site with seroprevalence than with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) case report data.”
What’s these findings mean according to JAMA is:
“ For most sites, it is likely that greater than 10 times more SARS-CoV-2 infections occurred than the number of reported COVID-19 cases; most persons in each site, however, likely had no detectable SARS-CoV-2 antibodies”.
To read the full study click here.
