One in five New Yorkers is believed to have been infected with Covid-19. It is the result of a serological survey commissioned by New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo. Carried out with 3,000 people randomly selected on the way to the supermarket, it revealed Thursday April 23 that 21.2% of the inhabitants of the city (8.5 million inhabitants), the global heart of the epidemic, had developed antibodies, while the statewide rate is 13.9%.
This result, according to Governor Cuomo, would indicate that 2.7 million New Yorkers (out of a population of 19.5 million) had the virus without knowing it. A figure far higher than the 250,000 cases officially registered in the state. Cuomo said the figure indicates that the case fatality rate is only 0.5%. In fact, if we add to the 15,740 "official" deaths the 5,000 untested deaths, but manifestly caused by the Covid-19, we arrive at a fatality rate of about 0.75%.
This survey has its biases: the reliability of serological tests is not complete, the selected people leaving their homes, by definition, are not confined and did not have symptoms, which could lead to an underestimation contamination. Nevertheless, at a time when the death toll in the United States has exceeded 50,000, we have an idea of the contamination in the epicenter of the global pandemic: huge, but insufficient. Huge, because this figure is the highest known (studies carried out in Los Angeles and Santa Clara, south of San Francisco, have given contamination rates of 4 to 5%). Insufficient, because reaching group immunity – assuming that people with antibodies today are protected in the long term – would have to be accomplished three more times.
Finances in the red
The study is published when the scenario of the American contamination has been completely revised. 1er March, New York was believed to have only one case of coronavirus, and the total in five major US cities (New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, Chicago) was only 23. This figure was completely false. According to a survey by Northeastern University, New York already had 10,700 infected, and the total of the five metropolises was 28,000, according to the survey, the results of which were revealed by the New york times. Thus, from the beginning of February and until March 16, the date on which the schools were closed, in the absence of tests and protective measures, New Yorkers actively infected each other. Another study by New York University and the hospital Mount Sinai concluded that the virus did not come from China to New York, but from Europe.
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