More Americans Infected with COVID-19 in 2020 Than Previously Estimated: Research
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – More Americans were infected with coronavirus at the end of 2020 than was previously estimated, according to new research.
According to a Nature preprint study by researchers at Columbia University, the true number of COVID-19 infections in the US at the end of 2020 was likely more than 100 million, as opposed to the more than 20 million cases data from Johns Hopkins University had determined were confirmed at the time.
National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins wrote about the Nature report in a blog post on Tuesday. He said the revised number, which is nearly a third of the US’s population of 328 million, illustrates “just how rapidly this novel coronavirus spread through the country last year,” The Hill reported.
The researchers, when looking at data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) regarding people who tested positive for antibodies, discovered that only around 11 percent of all COVID-19 cases confirmed in March were bolstered by a positive test result.
By the end of the year, however, the ascertainment rate — which refers to the number of infections that were known versus unknown — rose to an average of roughly 25 percent.
The researchers also discovered that on Dec. 21, 2020, an estimated 0.77 percent of the US population had a contagious COVID-19 infection. In some areas, however — such as Los Angeles — that number was much higher.
The COVID-19 fatality rate also decreased as time progressed, according to the researchers, dropping from 0.77 percent in April 2020 to 0.31 percent in December.
Collins, in his blog post, went on to tout the effectiveness of vaccines in protecting against serious COVID-19 illness.
He also touched on the current growing threat from COVID-19: the highly contagious delta variant, which has taken hold as the dominant strain in the US
The US is currently a spike in cases nationwide driven largely by the delta variant. The majority of recent hospitalizations and deaths, however, have been among unvaccinated individuals, which illustrates the effectiveness of the shots in protecting against severe illness.
Collins said the variant and potential for breakthrough cases, which the CDC refers to as infections in fully vaccinated individuals, “have become a much bigger concern.”
According to the CDC, more than 40 million COVID-19 cases have been reported in the US since the beginning of the pandemic, and more than 649,000 people have died as a result of the virus.
