Stanford Study: Coronavirus Exposure Far Exceeds Official Count

STANFORD, CA — The odds that you’ve already been exposed to the new coronavirus without knowing it are far greater than previously thought.

That’s according to the findings of a non-peer reviewed study conducted by Stanford estimating that the actual number of COVID-19 infected persons in Santa Clara County was 50 to 85 times more than the official count at time of the study earlier this month.

Dr. Eran Bendavid, an infectious disease specialist and professor of medicine with Stanford Health Policy, led the study.

Similar antibody studies are being conducted throughout the country. The studies could help medical experts better understand the new coronavirus and ultimately shape future public policy decisions.

“This has implications for learning how far we are in the course of the epidemic,” Bendavid told The San Jose Mercury News.

“It has implications for epidemic models that are being used to design policies and estimate what it means for our healthcare system.”

Those who test positive for the COVID-19 antibody, whether or not they develop symptoms, are believed to have some degree of immunity to the disease.

The study tested for COVID-19 antibodies in the blood of approximately 3,300 Santa Clara residents April 2-3 – not those currently infected with the disease.

The study concluded that as of April 1, when Santa Clara County had 956 confirmed COVID-19 cases, approximately 48,000 to 81,000 Santa Clara residents had been infected with the virus, CNN reports.

There were 1,870 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Santa Clara County according to its most recent report on Friday, April 17.

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The Santa Clara County Public Health Department acknowledges in a statement on its website that the official count represents a small percentage of the actual number of infected persons.

“Community transmission is believed to be widespread throughout Santa Clara County,” the statement says. “Limited testing capacity means case counts represent only a small portion of actual cases within each city”

Similar antibody studies are being conducted by the National Institutes of Health and in Miami-Dade County, Florida; San Miguel County, Colorado and Los Angeles, California, among other locations, CNN reports. Major League Baseball is also conducting an antibody study.

The study suggests the COVID-19 mortality rate to be far lower than previously thought. As of Tuesday April 14, the United States reported fatality rate of COVID-19 infected persons to be 4.1%, The Guardian reports.

The findings of the Stanford report suggest the actual death rate to be 0.12% to 0.2%.

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Stanford researchers tested for proteins that prevent infection called “neutralizing antibodies” found in the blood of COVID-19 survivors, The Santa The San Jose Mercury News reports.

George Lemp, an infectious disease epidemiologist and former director of the University of California’s HIV/AIDS Research Program who wasn’t involved in the study told the Mercury he believes the Stanford study overestimates the actual number of infected persons.

“This is a good first step. I applaud them for trying to get at some quick estimate,” Lemp told the Mercury.

“It tells you there is a lot of virus out there – that there are many-fold more infections out there than diagnosed cases.”

To those who conclude from the study that the shutdown most of the United States is currently under should be lifted, Arthur Reingold, an epidemiology professor at UC Berkeley who was not involved in the study warns in an interview with The Guardian, not so fast.

“The idea this would be a passport to going safely back to work and getting us up and running has two constraints: we do not know if antibodies protect you and for how long, and a very small percentage of the population even has antibodies,” Reingold told the Guardian.

The study pours a bucket of cold water on the discredited theory advanced by Stanford Hoover Institute senior fellow and conservative political columnist Victor Davis Hanson that Californians had developed some degree of herd immunity to the coronavirus.

The study found the rate of infection to be 3% of the population, meaning 97% hasn’t yet been infected. Infectious disease experts told The San Francisco Chronicle herd immunity requires 40% of a population at the minimum to have immunity.

Hanson’s theory has been embraced by right-wing media in opposition to stay-at-home orders the vast majority of the country is currently under that medical experts say are needed to contain the pandemic.

Fox News primetime hosts Laura Ingraham, Jeanine Pirro and Tucker Carlson, among others in right-wing media, have in recent days promoted so-called “Freedom Rallies” protesting the stay-at-home orders in parts of the Midwest and Southern California.