US COVID-19 cases in first pandemic wave may have been 5 times higherDuring the first US wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, there may have been almost 17 million undiagnosed COVID-19 infections in addition to the known 3 million cases, or about five times more than officially reported, according to a study in Science Translational Medicine yesterday.The researchers conducted enzyme-linked immunoassay serologic tests for COVID-19 antibodies on 8,058 undiagnosed US adults from May 10 to Jul 31, 2020, and found that 304 (4.6%) had COVID-19 antibodies.
This indicates that there were 4.8 undiagnosed infections for every diagnosed case during this period, the researchers say, adding about 16.8 million infections to the country's total.The cohort was