Wuhan coronavirus infections may be 10 times higher than reported, China CDC study findshttps://www.foxnews.com/health/wuhan-coronavirus-infections-may-be-10-times-higher-china-cdc-studyA study on coronavirus antibodies in Wuhan’s population conducted back in mid-April suggests the true tally of COVID-19 infections may have been 10 times higher than the numbers were reported by health officials.
Of the 11 million people living in the city, China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found 4.43% had antibodies for the virus. That percentage amounts to nearly 500,000 people who had contracted the novel virus, but at the time, the city was reporting about 50,000 infections.
The CDC study involved a sampling of more than 34,000 people in Wuhan and six nearby provinces. Wuhan is where the virus was first detected nearly a year ago.
Outside of Wuhan, the study found the prevalence of antibodies was significantly lower, registering 0.44%. The CDC said that the low rate indicated that Wuhan’s disease control measures "effectively prevented the virus from spreading on a large scale," according to the South China Morning Post, however, the containment measures and when officials chose to act has since come under intense scrutiny.
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The discrepancy in the number of coronavirus infections reported and the potential number of actual illnesses could be due to testing mishaps and struggles early in the outbreak, as well as asymptomatic spread, experts told the news outlet. There was also differences in how cases were counted among health agencies during the peak of the first wave.
1. In a real-world context, I doubt that anything close to the truth regarding the extent of SARS-CoV-2 in China is knowable. Too many layers of government bureaucracy with @$$es to cover control access to data. For this reason the 10X number may well be low.
2. Test availability in China was much earlier than in the US, for (at least) two reasons: 1. China had the earliest possible access to the virus DNA sequence and at least one test was in production before that DNA sequence was
leaked to the outside world; 2. the CDC lab in Atlanta F'ed up production of their test by making under-graduate-biology-lab errors, delaying test availability in the UIS for 3-4 weeks.
