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The results of a Spanish study on Covid-19 immunity have a scary takeaway
VOX
By Matthew Yglesias on May 16, 2020 10:00 am
One of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in the world isn’t anything close to a worst-case scenario.
Spain has had one of the worst Covid-19 outbreaks in the world, which makes a recently completed antibody-testing study of the Spanish population so significant — and so scary.
Preliminary results from a well-designed survey of antibody presence among Spaniards suggest that even as the Spanish outbreak exploded and then was brought under control, only 5 percent of the country’s population has been infected with the coronavirus so far. This means that the vast majority of the Spanish population remains susceptible to infection if the lifting of restrictions there leads to a new spike in cases.
The message to the rest of the world is that as awful as the pandemic has been in Spain — where more than 27,000 people have died, a far higher per-capita death rate than in the US or even Italy — it’s not even close to an upper limit on how bad things can get.
Serology surveys, explained
When people talk about coronavirus testing, they usually mean a test to detect the presence of the virus in your body and to determine whether you need to isolate.
Preliminary results from a well-designed survey of antibody presence among Spaniards suggest that even as the Spanish outbreak exploded and then was brought under control, only 5 percent of the country’s population has been infected with the coronavirus so far. This means that the vast majority of the Spanish population remains susceptible to infection if the lifting of restrictions there leads to a new spike in cases.
The message to the rest of the world is that as awful as the pandemic has been in Spain — where more than 27,000 people have died, a far higher per-capita death rate than in the US or even Italy — it’s not even close to an upper limit on how bad things can get.
Serology surveys, explained
When people talk about coronavirus testing, they usually mean a test to detect the presence of the virus in your body and to determine whether you need to isolate.
Read more: https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2020/5/16/21259492/covid-antibodies-spain-serology-study-coronavirus-immunity
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