Two recent antibody, or serologic, studies out of California suggested that the number of coronavirus infections was 40 to 85 times higher than the number of cases being reported, which would put the fatality rate at a much lower percentage than we’re seeing now.
“It looks like four to five percent of people in the U.S who have coronavirus die,” said Dr. Krys Johnson, though she says it is likely that the actual figure is less than 1%, citing studies out of South Korea.
Johnson calls the California studies a good start, but said they were flawed, noting that both used small sample sizes, and one, conducted out of Stanford University, recruited mostly wealthy Silicon Valley participants through random Facebook ads.
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“Other studies need to use better serologic tests that are upcoming and do that on a bigger testing and on a more blanket scale, not just on Facebook ads,” Johnson said.
Antibody studies may be the answer at this point, said Johnson, because, unlike countries like China and South Korea, the U.S. has yet to develop a system for blanket coronavirus testing.
“Getting that testing out there, whether it’s COVID testing or serology testing can really better understand what that case fatality rate is, and how deadly this is in our specific population,” Johnson added.
Health experts in New York and Massachusetts have conducted bigger antibody studies but they’ve not yet published the final results.
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