A group of American researchers found that the number of people infected with coronavirus may be ten times more than is recorded in official statistics. Study version of a Preprint (draft) is published on the resource medRxiv.
Scientists conducted an experiment in the County of Santa Clara in Northern California, the United States became one of the first, where it was recorded the spread of infection. Researchers have tested 3.3 thousand volunteers from the local community to have antibodies to coronavirus, to assess how many people could have been infected earlier.
According to the estimates of authors of the experiment, 2.5% and 4.2% of the district’s population may have antibodies to the coronavirus, which suggests that they could have moved COVID-19.
“These estimates reflect a distribution range from 48 thousand to 81 thousand people infected in the County of Santa Clara by the beginning of April, which exceeds the number of confirmed cases from 50 to 85 times" – suggest the researchers.
One of the authors, Stanford University Professor Jay Bhattacharya told in an interview with CNN that the study may also provide a more realistic representation of mortality from COVID-19.
According to him, if infected with the coronavirus is really much more than is recorded in official statistics, the death rate from COVID-19 may be proportionally lower than that expected now.
World health organization March 11 announced the outbreak of a new coronavirus infection COVID-19 pandemic. According to recent reports, has infected over two million people, about 140 thousand died. By this time in the United States related to the coronavirus had died of complications to 36.7 thousand people, confirmed more than 700 thousand cases of infection.
