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Nearly a third of the entire U.S. population had been infected with COVID by the end of 2020 – a much higher infection rate than previously experienced, a surprising new study has found.
The study, which was conducted by researchers at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and published in the journal Nature on Thursday, found that 103 million Americans, or 31% of the population, had been infected with December 2020 – and that the rate of infection in New York at the time was even higher at 44%.
“The vast majority of infectious cases were not explained by the number of confirmed cases,” said Jeffrey Shaman, one of the report’s researchers and professor of environmental health sciences at the Mailman School. “It is these undocumented cases, which are often mild infectious or asymptomatic, that allow the virus to spread rapidly through the population at large. “
The study aimed to explain the lack of testing at the start of the pandemic and the fact that people with no or few symptoms were less likely to get tested.
Its results, coupled with COVID test results from late December 2020, reveal a glaring gap.
While the study estimates that 31% of the overall United States population was infected in December, the Centers for Disease Control released statistics the same month showing that only 12.3% of COVID tests performed at the time. were positive.
Peer-reviewed research found that at the end of 2020, infection rates were particularly high in several regions and major cities, with 48% of Chicagoans infected, 52% in Los Angeles, and 42% from Miami.
In parts of the Midwest like Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa, more than 60% of the population had been infected, according to the study.
“As the landscape has changed with the availability of vaccines and the spread of new variants, it is important to recognize how dangerous the pandemic was in its first year,” said Sen Pei, one of the researchers and assistant professor at Mailman.
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