Washington: Far more Americans have been infected with COVID-19 than reported case counts reflect, a new government report suggests.
COVID-19 infections were anywhere from six to 24 times higher than the number of reported cases in 10 different sites across the United States tested at different times during the pandemic, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study found.
In seven U.S. locales, there were more than 10 times the number of COVID-19 infections than there were reported cases, antibody testing led by Dr. Fiona Havers, of the CDC’s COVID-19 Response Team, revealed.
“The findings may reflect the number of persons who had mild or no illness or who did not seek medical care or undergo testing but who still may have contributed to ongoing virus transmission in the population,” the researchers concluded.
The findings were published July 21 in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.
The percentage of people with COVID-19 coronavirus antibodies in their blood ranged from 1% in the San Francisco Bay area up to nearly 7% in the New York City metro area, based on analysis of previously gathered blood samples.
Those numbers far outpace reported case counts but unfortunately still aren’t broad enough to promote herd immunity, the point at which enough people are immune to a virus to protect those who haven’t been either sick or vaccinated, according to an editorial accompanying the study.
