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“The results presented now allow us to estimate the global seropositivity of the population to the SARS-CoV-2 virus at 1.9 percent by September 2020.“, which is equivalent to about 195 thousand people, announced the João Lobo Antunes Institute of Molecular Medicine (iMM) that developed this study, financed in two million euros by the Francisco Francisco dos Santos Society and the Jerónimo Martins group.
The National Serological Panel Covid-19 (PSN), which took place between September 8 and October 14 in 102 municipalities of mainland Portugal and the islands, included a sample of about 13,000 volunteers, distributed in nine strata that crossed the population density. and the age group almost proportionally to the Portuguese population.
According to the private research institute, the panel allowed “to make a portrait of the first wave of Covid-19, through the proportion of the population that, through serological evaluation, developed specific antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 virus.”
Regarding the results by age group, the study indicates that the estimated prevalence of Covid-19 was higher in young people under 18 years of age, but “without statistical significance at the national level”.
In the group of minors the prevalence was estimated at 2.2 percent, compared with the two percent found in the group of volunteers between 18 and 54 years and 1.7 percent over 54 years.
“The estimated prevalence increases with population density, assuming a statistically higher value in high-density regions: 2.5 percent in high-density regions, compared to 1.4 percent in medium-density regions and 1.2 in low-density regions” , the study also states.
The results also point to a “significantly higher” seroprevalence, estimated at 3.2%, in young people under 18 years of age in areas of high population density, while the proportion of HIV-positive people is also “much higher” (27 %) among volunteers who had someone in their family with Covid-19.
Equality of men and women
The study, which was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Lisbon Academic Center, did not detect differences in the prevalence of HIV between men and women.
According to Bruno Silva-Santos, principal investigator of the study, the results “allow to make a picture of the first wave of Covid-19 and show that the country managed to flatten the curve in the first wave of the pandemic, which translates into a prevalence estimated SARS-CoV-2 infection of only 1.9 percent “of the Portuguese population.
“We continue to work on data from health questionnaires, factors associated with the symptoms of Covid-19 and other diseases, which will allow us to make a more complete analysis of this picture of the first wave of the pandemic,” said the deputy director of the iMM.
The definition and characterization of the sample had the contribution of specialists from Pordata, a database organized by the Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation, and from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon, to which the iMM is added.
The Covid-19 pandemic caused at least 1,649,927 deaths as a result of more than 74.1 million cases of infection worldwide, according to a report by the French agency AFP.
In Portugal, 5,902 people died for 362,616 confirmed cases of infection, according to the most recent bulletin of the General Directorate of Health.
