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More than 21% of the New York City residents randomly given coronavirus antibody tests earlier this week tested positive, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in a news conference on Thursday.
The test, also known as a serologic test, looks for the presence of antibodies, which are specific proteins made in response to infections, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Their presence in the blood indicates that a person has had the virus, though their accuracy has been under scrutiny.
Monday marked the start of a widespread initiative to administer antibody tests to 3,000 New Yorkers in grocery stores across the state. Results were collected over two days in 19 counties and 40 localities.
Statewide, 13.9% of the 3,000 individuals tested were positive for coronavirus antibodies, meaning “these were people who were infected and who developed the antibodies to fight the infection,” Cuomo said.
If the state infection rate stands at 13.9% on a large scale, that would amount to roughly 2.7 million people who have been infected, and drops the fatality rate of the virus down to about 0.5%, the governor said.
On that same basis, the 21.2% infection rate in New York City would suggest that more than 1.7 million city residents have had the virus.
New York state has 263,460 confirmed cases of coronavirus and a total of 15,740 people have died, 438 of them on Tuesday alone.
The death rate has been falling, as has the number of total hospitalizations and the number of intubations, but the number of new COVID-19 hospitalizations is flat. “That is not great news,” Cuomo said. “We would like to see that going down but it’s not going up either.
Earlier Wednesday, Dr. Oxiris Barbot, commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, said she wouldn’t be surprised if “close to a million New Yorkers have been exposed to COVID-19.”
However, experts suggest caution in scaling up the numbers to apply to the whole city and state.
If the people tested “were all people who never had symptoms and were going out to shop for their family,” it would bring up very different results than “if everyone who was shopping was a health-care worker,” said Dr. Danielle Ompad, associate professor of epidemiology at NYU School of Global Public Health.
“Without understanding who was in the sample, I’d be careful in saying that 13.9% of people who live in the state” have been infected, Ompad said.
Nonetheless, the data is “critical to decision-making and planning,” according to Ompad. “I’m really happy to see these data start to emerge. They provide a working start to help us understand this.”
Widespread antibody testing is thought to be one of the key components in the process of restarting the economy and identifying who can safely return to work.
Also see: Despite stimulus bills, New York’s small businesses face huge challenges
But there is not enough evidence that a positive antibody test indicated immunity, warned Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, deputy commissioner for the Division of Disease Control at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, in an alert to medical providers on Wednesday.
“Serologic tests should not be used to diagnose acute or prior [COVID-19] infection, nor should they be used to determine immune status to [COVID-19],” he said. “They may produce false negative or false positive results, the consequences of which include providing patients incorrect guidance on preventive interventions like physical distancing or protective equipment.”
Daskalakis cautioned health-care providers and clinical laboratories from “assuming that any of the [COVID-19] serology test kits now being marketed, some advertising falsely that they have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, are reliable enough for use in routine clinical practice.”
The antibody test result’s indication of a wider-than-reported infection spread is backed by a model from Northeastern University, published in the New York Times on Wednesday. The model said that while there were just 23 confirmed cases of coronavirus across five major U.S. cities, as of March 1, there could have in fact been roughly 28,000 infections going undetected at that time.
Other New York coronavirus developments Thursday:
Nursing Homes: Cuomo announced he will partner with state Attorney General Letitia James to investigate nursing home violations, such as failure to communicate COVID-19 test results and deaths to residents’ families. Mayor Bill de Blasio, meanwhile, said nursing homes will receive increased supplies and staffing.
