Antibodies Research Shows That Coronavirus May Be More Widespread Than Known

Two research teams in California, as well as many dedicated volunteers, are out to determine how many people actually possess protective novel coronavirus antibodies and possible immunity from the virus. According to their research, the virus may be more widespread than previously known.

According to ABC News, the first large-scale community test of 3,300 people in Santa Clara County discovered that 2.5 to 4.2% of those tested were positive for antibodies, a number suggesting a much higher prior infection rate than the official count. According to the initial data, researchers estimate that the range of people who may have had the virus to be between 48,000 and 81,000 in the county of 2 million, which is shockingly higher than the approximately 1,000 in the county’s official count at the time that the samples were taken.

For the study, volunteers only had to endure a finger prick. A drop of blood was then used to determine whether the volunteers, who were recruited through targeted ads online, had protective antibodies in their blood remaining after the coronavirus. Volunteers were tested at three drive-through sites throughout the county.

“Our findings suggest that there is somewhere between 50- and 80-fold more infections in our county than what’s known by the number of cases than are reported by our department of public health,” Dr. Eran Bendavid, the associate professor of medicine at Stanford University who led the study, explained in an interview with Diane Sawyer of ABC News.

Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor, says that the use of online ads to find volunteers could distort the candidate pool. He also pointed out that the results for just one California county could not necessarily represent the entire U.S. population. However, he did acknowledge that the study is “adding to this confirmation of what we’ve expected, which is a much larger number of cases than we ever anticipated.”

“There has been wide recognition that we were undercounting infections because of lack of testing or patients were asymptomatic,” Brownstein said.

Experts are hoping that antibody tests will assist them in determining whether someone has fully recovered as well as whether a person has been exposed to the virus in the past. While there is no guarantee of complete immunity even if a person does possess antibodies, doctors are hopeful that those who do have them could contain some level of immunity protection. Antibodies could be a useful tool to help determine who is allowed to re-enter the workforce and when safely.