According to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 500,000 residents of Wuhan, where the coronavirus pandemic originated, may have been infected with the deadly bug – nearly 10 times the number recorded.
A study by the agency used a sample of 34,000 people in the central China metropolis of about 1 million residents and other cities in Hubei province, as well as Beijing, Shanghai and several other provinces to estimate contamination rates, CNN reported.
About 4.4 percent of those tested in Wuhan – who reported a total of 50,354 confirmed cases, according to the city’s municipal health committee – were found to have specific antibodies that can fight the virus.
The study attempted to estimate the extent of previous infections in a population by testing blood serum samples for antibodies from a pool of people.
It was conducted in April – a month after China experienced “the first wave of the COVID-19 epidemic” – and the results were released Monday, CNN said.
Prevalence outside of Wuhan is significantly lower, the study found. In other cities in Hubei, the province that includes the capital, only 0.44 percent of the residents surveyed were found to have the antibodies.
Outside of Hubei, antibodies were found in only two of the more than 12,000 respondents.
Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the study highlights underreporting of infections at the height of the Wuhan outbreak – in part due to chaos and the failure to include asymptomatic cases.
Huang said the much lower rates in other Chinese cities suggest that “Chinese containment efforts were indeed swift and effective, especially when compared to cities like New York.”
The Chinese CDC highlighted the country’s victory by containing the virus when the results were announced Monday.
“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, effectively controlling the widespread spread of the epidemic, ”he said.