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Nearly half a million Wuhan residents may have been infected with coronavirus, nearly 10 times the city’s official number of confirmed cases, a study by China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests.
The research aimed to estimate the scale of previous infections by analyzing blood serum samples from various people in different cities to detect antibodies against the coronavirus.
The number of people with antibodies among the Wuhan sample group is higher than might be expected given the official number of confirmed cases in the city, which was the original epicenter of the pandemic.
The study focused on 34,000 people in Wuhan and other cities to estimate infection rates, CNN reported.
Beijing and Shanghai were included in the study, as well as cities in Hubei, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Sichuan and Lianoning provinces.
Among residents of Wuhan, home to about 11 million people, the researchers found an antibody prevalence rate of 4.43 percent.
Nearly half a million Wuhan residents may have been infected with coronavirus, nearly 10 times the city’s official number of confirmed cases, a study by China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests. In the photo: A woman walks during a snow shower in Wuhan on December 29
The city’s Municipal Health Commission had reported a total of 50,354 confirmed cases as of Sunday, according to CNN.
China’s CDC said the study had been conducted a month after China “contained the first wave of the Covid-19 epidemic” and revealed a much higher prevalence rate among Wuhan residents.
In other cities in Hubei province, where Wuhan is located, only 0.44% of the people studied were found to have antibodies against the coronavirus.
This continued to fall outside the province, where the antibodies were only found in two people among the more than 12,000 studied.
China’s CDC posted the study results on social media on Monday. It is not clear if the research has been published in academic journals.
CNN reported that Yanzhong Huang, senior global health researcher at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the study highlights the underreporting of infections during the height of the outbreak.
This was partly because asymptomatic cases were not included in the official count at the time, along with the widespread chaos of tackling the new virus.
Wuhan hospitals were flooded with fever patients in January and February last year, overwhelming staff who lacked the resources to effectively diagnose and treat the large number of patients.
The city’s Municipal Health Commission has reported a total of 50,354 confirmed cases, according to CNN. Pictured: A man shops at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, which was linked to several early cases of the coronavirus. While the section of the ‘wet market’ where the disease is believed to have originated has been closed, the optician shops on the second floor remain open
Life in the city of 11 million people, which was the original epicenter of the pandemic, is slowly returning to normal. Pictured: A man visits an exhibition called People First, Lives First on China’s Covid-19 response at the Culture Expo Center, which used to be a makeshift hospital in Wuhan, China.
Many were told to isolate themselves at home. In some cases, this led to other family members being infected or even people dying at home without being included in the toll.
Huang told CNN that considerably lower rates in other Chinese cities suggest that China’s containment efforts “were really quick and effective.”
Wuhan was completely cut off from the outside world on January 23, with all transportation in and out of the city suspended.
A brutal 76-day lockdown was imposed on the city’s millions of residents who were confined to their homes, unable to even go out to buy essentials.
Despite the harshness of the closure in Wuhan, the Chinese government has congratulated it for allowing the country to contain the outbreak and return to normalcy more quickly than most other nations.
Releasing the results of the antibody study on Monday, China’s CDC also praised the containment efforts.
‘The results of the study show that the population of our country has a low infection rate. It indicates that China has managed to control the epidemic with Wuhan as the main battlefield and has effectively controlled the large-scale spread of the epidemic, ” the agency said.
The Chinese government has hailed the brutal 76-day lockdown in Wuhan as a success in containing the virus and allowing the country to return to normal before most others. In the photo: shoppers in Wuhan on December 28
While problems related to under-registration are not unique to China and antibody studies in other parts of the world have also indicated that the coronavirus was considerably more prevalent than official figures suggest, China has faced criticism for its initial handling of the pandemic.
Officials have been accused of a lack of transparency around coronavirus figures, with officials releasing more optimistic data to the public and maintaining some negative internal figures, according to CNN.
A whistleblower provided documents to the broadcaster showing that health officials were aware of the “ clinically diagnosed cases ” of coronavirus before these figures were released to the general public.
Once officials began including these cases in the daily count of confirmed infections on February 12, the number increased ninefold from the previous day.
The documents also showed that on February 10 and March 7, officials publicly announced a lowercase count of the one they recorded internally.
Chinese authorities have also moved to silence citizen doctors and journalists who spoke out about the dire situations in Wuhan hospitals.
On Monday, a former lawyer who documented the height of the Wuhan outbreak was sentenced to four years in jail.
Zhang Zhan’s sentence, which has been harshly criticized by the international community, was for “causing fights and causing trouble.” Independent journalists Li Zehua and Fang Bin were also detained for their coverage of the pandemic.
