Small percentage of people have had CV than thought?

[Thewheelsonthebus23]

The data is in. A lot of government reports from European countries on seroprevalence to SARS-CoV-2 this week and they all show the same - it's low.

Spain ~5%
Italy ~5%
Sweden ~5%
Denmark ~1%
Norway < 1%

This means 95-99% of the population did not have Covid yet.
How is this possible?! It’s also rather worrying.

Why is it rather worrying that the numbers look low? They always look low as a percentage as we have such a high population, think worldometer said 67 million in the UK.

@tabbymumz that herd immunity isn’t as prevalent as first thought.

Sources?

It's worrying because that means the death rate is quite high, there was a lot of hope that there are loads of asymptomatic people in society who've had it and that would mean the death rate was much lower. It also means that not that many people have any immunity (we don't know how long immunity lasts if you've had it but you'd expect at least a few months possibly longer).

I found the reported percentages on twitter and someone has replied;

"You are not reporting all the numbers. We have NY at 25-30% (reported by Cuomo). We have towns in Bergamo Province at >60%. We have France at 10% and Lombardy as a whole at 20-25%."

Maybe worth investigating in more detail.

@Stuckforthefourthtime

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.11.20098442v1

www.isciii.es/Noticias/Noticias/Paginas/Noticias/PrimerosDatosEstudioENECOVID19.aspx?fbclid=IwAR0askXAC4Is4rSY8EHR6S9TYAMZQWh6mAvuHNyUjNgiZP3TWe6Sj3pcwGo

www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/nyheter-och-press/nyhetsarkiv/2020/maj/forsta-resultaten-fran-pagaende-undersokning-av-antikroppar-for-covid-19-virus/

www.ssi.dk/aktuelt/nyheder/2020/de-forste-forelobige-resultater-af-undersogelsen-for-covid-19-i-befolkningen-er-nu-klar

www.nrk.no/norge/nye-fhi-beregninger_-viruset-er-mindre-utbredt_-men-mer-dodelig-1.15021397

Hang on...isnt that the number off deaths and not the numbers who've had it though? The numbers who have had it, but not died,will be much higher.

‘This means 95-99% of the population did not have Covid yet. ‘

It doesn’t mean that, because not everyone who has had covid produces antibodies. There’s also the possibility of T cell immunity or that a proportion of people are resistant in some other way, but it’s still early days when it comes to understanding on the one hand how the body successfully fights off covid and on the other how many people have done so.