April 21, 2020 | 7: 52 pm
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Individuals line up to get checked for COVID-19 in the Skid Row district Monday.
AP
The coronavirus break out in Los Angeles County is thought to have actually infected a minimum of 200,000 people by early April, which would far go beyond the number of formally confirmed cases, according to a report on Monday.
A big scale research study by the University of Southern California and the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health discovered that 4.1 percent of the county’s adult population has antibodies to the infection in their blood, which is a sign of previous direct exposure.
Based upon the county’s population, that indicates that between 221,000 and 442,000 adults in the location have actually previously been infected, the research study approximated.
” We have not known the true level of COVID-19 infections in our neighborhood since we have only evaluated individuals with signs, and the accessibility of tests has actually been restricted,” stated lead investigator Neeraj Sood, teacher of public policy at the USC Price School for Public Policy. “The price quotes also suggest that we may need to recalibrate illness forecast models and reconsider public health techniques.”
The outcomes were determined from antibody screening of about 863 people who were representative of L.A. County, the researchers stated, according to the L.A. Times.
The estimated infection numbers are 28 to 55 times greater than the 7,994 confirmed COVID-19 cases L.A. County had reported at the time of the study in early April.
Barbara Ferrer, director of the L.A. County Department of Public Health, stated the results show that a big percentage of the population unwittingly had the infection and are “at risk of sending the virus to others.”
Due to the greater infection numbers, it also implies the death rate from the infection is much lower than initially thought.
” Though the results suggest a lower danger of death among those with infection than was formerly thought, the variety of COVID-related deaths every day continues to mount, highlighting the requirement for continued energetic prevention and control efforts,” stated Paul Simon, primary science officer at the L.A. County Department of Public Health and co-lead on the study.
A minimum of 615 coronavirus deaths have been validated in the county since Tuesday early morning, according to information from Johns Hopkins.
Researchers intend to repeat the study every couple of weeks over a number of months in order to track the spread of the virus, the L.A. Times reported.
