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$AKTX The latest on the coronavirus pandemic
By Joshua Berlinger, Steve George, Ivana Kottasová, Ed Upright, Melissa Macaya, Meg Wagner and Mike Hayes, CNN

Updated 2:12 p.m. ET, July 21, 2020
https://edition.cnn.com/world/live-news/coronavirus-pandemic-07-21-20-intl/h_d8ed32faec73327b10cf05a90928fc91

The number of people who have had Covid-19 was much greater than the official case count, according to data and a new analysis released by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the country is far from a level that would give the population herd immunity.

Depending on the region, the number of people infected was sometimes six to 24 times the number of reported cases, the CDC team said.

“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,” the team concluded.
These numbers are likely conservative, according to the study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The data used in the analysis was published on the CDC website Tuesday.

CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said earlier this month that testing had likely missed 90% or so of cases.

The CDC wanted to see if the official test tally showed the actual numbers of infections. They analyzed test results from 16,000 people in 10 geographically diverse cities and states done between March and early May. These people were tested, not because they had coronavirus symptoms but for other reasons – for instance, if they were having surgery and the hospital did the test as a matter of course.

These tests would give a broader sense of who has been infected by the novel coronavirus than just the number of people who have sought tests because they didn’t feel well and suspected they had Covid-19.

There is a limit to this methodology. These people tested may not have been representative of the general population, nor does it take into account the disease exposure risk. It’s also possible that there could be some overlap, and people may have been tested more than once, the CDC said. The infections may not be evenly distributed even in these regions.

The results do show that the majority of people in these 10 sites have not had Covid-19. It also shows that people who are asymptomatic are still contributing to the spread of the disease, so the authors argue that the public should continue to take steps to prevent the spread by wearing masks, staying physically distant and staying home as much as possible.