About 25% of residents of the New York City area have likely already been infected with the coronavirus, former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb said Tuesday.
Researchers at the Mount Sinai Health System in New York City released a study Monday, suggesting that 19.3% of people in the city had already been exposed to the virus as of April 19.
Even if that number of people have Covid-19 antibodies in New York City, the initial epicenter of the outbreak in the US, the researchers noted that it would still be well below the 67% estimate needed to achieve collective immunity, which is necessary to give the general public extensive protection against the virus. The study has not yet been peer reviewed or accepted by an official medical journal for publication.
Based on their findings, the researchers concluded that approximately 0.7% of all people infected with the virus in New York City died from Covid-19. However, Gottlieb said the infection death rate, which takes into account asymptomatic patients who never develop symptoms, has likely increased since mid-April.
“If you probably pulled that out now, you did a seroprevalence study now, you’d probably see the infection death rate a little bit higher because more people succumbed to the infection over time from April to now,” he said. he said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box”. “And you’re probably going to see that seroprevalence is a little bit higher because more people have been infected, so I guess about 25% of New York has probably been infected with Covid.”
The infection mortality rate is probably lower than the case fatality rate, which looks at the percentage of people who have symptoms and end up dying. Gottlieb said the case fatality rate could be closer to 1.1% or 1.2%.
The study findings are in line with what other researchers, including those from New York State who conducted their own seroprevalence study, have found, Gottlieb said, helping to boost confidence in those studies.
“We can begin to believe that this probably represents an approximation of what the actual result is,” he said.
The relationship between the presence of antibodies and immunity when it comes to the coronavirus remains unclear. The study authors noted that previous research on other coronaviruses has indicated that the antibodies confer immunity. However, health officials, including Gottlieb and White House health adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci, have warned that the level and duration of immunity provided by the antibodies is still unclear.
The researchers said the antibody test used in the study has a 95% sensitivity rate, which means it detects positive cases 95% of the time and a specificity of 100%, which means it accurately reflects negative cases. 100% of the time. That means that the tests could produce a false negative result, but not a false positive antibody test. All tests were analyzed in a research laboratory. The sample of patients used to determine the prevalence of the virus in the general population was made up of patients who presented in the bush. Sinai for a regular medical procedure or check-up, unrelated to Covid-19.
The authors of the Mount Sinai study recognized some factors that could have biased their sampling of the general population, but said that “it does, however, provide a window into the scope of seroprevalence in New York.” The study was partially funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Collaborative Centers for Influenza Vaccine Innovation, the JPB Foundation and other donors.
Since April, New York and the tri-state region have managed to significantly reduce their level of spread, meaning that “seroprevalence will likely not change significantly unless new infections increase again or vaccines become available,” the researchers said.
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