Wuhan’s COVID-19 cases were perhaps ten times higher: study

Nearly 500,000 residents in Wuhan, where the coronavirus pandemic originated, may have been infected with the deadly infection – according to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly ten times the recorded count.

In a study by the agency, a sample of 34,000 people in the central China metropolis used about 1 million residents and other cities in Hubei province, as well as Beijing, Shanghai and several other provinces to estimate the infection rates, reported CNN.

About 4.4 percent of those tested in Wuhan, according to the city’s municipal health commission, which reported a total of 50,354 confirmed cases, found that they had specific antibodies that could fight the virus.

The study sought to estimate the extent of previous infections in a population by testing blood serum samples for antibodies from a group of people.

This was done in April – a month after China ‘contains the first wave of the COVID-19 epidemic’ – and according to CNN, the results were announced on Monday.

The study showed that the incidence outside Wuhan is significantly lower. In other cities in Hubei, the province that includes the capital, only 0.44 percent of the residents studied have antibodies.

Outside Hubei, antibodies were only surveyed in two people among the more than 12,000.

Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Foreign Relations Council, said the study highlighted the under-reporting of infections during the outbreak in Wuhan – partly due to chaos and the failure to include asymptomatic cases.

Huang said the much lower rates in other Chinese cities indicate that the Chinese curtailment was quick and effective, especially compared to cities like New York. “

The Chinese CDC highlighted the country’s victory in the fight against the virus when it announced the results on Monday.

“The results of the study show that our country’s population has a low infection rate. “This indicates that China has succeeded in controlling the epidemic with Wuhan as the main battlefield, and has effectively controlled the large-scale spread of the epidemic,” he said.

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