Antibody Tests Positive For 14 Percent In Greenwich Village: Data

GREENWICH VILLAGE, NY — Just over 14 percent of Greenwich Village residents tested for antibodies showed signs they were previously infected with the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, according to new city data.

Out of the 28,455 residents tested in the three Zip Codes that make up the neighborhood, roughly 14.3 percent tested positive, according to data released by the Department of Health on Tuesday.

The local Zip Code with the highest rate of positive tests was 10011, which contains a small section of Greenwich Village and a much larger area of Chelsea. About 14.9 percent of antibody tests came back positive for residents in that area.

Greenwich Village's other two Zip Codes had the same positive test rate, with a roughly 14.2 percent positive rate on antibody tests for residents living in 10012 and 10014 Zip Codes.

Manhattan had the lowest rate of positive tests out of the five boroughs, with about 19 percent of tests coming back positive. On the other side of the spectrum, The Bronx had the highest rate at about 33 percent.

An antibody test indicates if a person has been exposed to the coronavirus by measuring their bloodstream for signs that their immune system produced proteins called antibodies to fight off the virus.

On Tuesday, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that the city's website for coronavirus data would start, including the results of antibody tests.

Additionally, a positive test result could mean the person has antibodies from an infection with a virus in the same family as the coronavirus, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The chance of receiving a false negative can be as high as 30 percent, depending on when the test is conducted, according to a Harvard Medical School blog post.

The data may not accurately reflect the prevalence of antibodies among all neighborhood residents or New York City residents, because people who have been ill with COVID-19 symptoms or were exposed to the virus may be likelier to seek out antibody testing, the city wrote in a disclaimer about the dataset.

"We will be the first jurisdiction in the nation to present our antibody data this way," de Blasio told reporters. "While there is still much to learn about the science of COVID-19 antibody testing, it is an important element to consider when understanding the epidemiology of COVID."

Patch reporter Maya Kaufman and Nick Garber contributed to this report.