An Ochsner COVID-19 study of 25,000 Jefferson and Orleans Parish residents finds an estimated seven percent had coronavirus antibodies in mid-May. That’s far below the rate needed to obtain herd immunity, a pop theory making the rounds that advocates for purposeful infection of the population to lower the rate of viral transmission.
The work also studied how likely people were to die if they were to be infected. Research scientist Dr. Amy Feehan says the infection fatality rate was 1.63 percent.
“For comparision the infection fatality rate of the flu is .4 to .16 for this last flu season, making this new virus ten to forty times more deadly than the flu,” says Feehan.
The test was conducted from May 11th to May 15th.
The study showed Black residents (11%) are nearly twice as likely to get infected as white residents (6%), but once infected are just about as likely to suffer a fatal outcome. The data also showed Asians have a significantly lower rate of death once infected.
Feehan says they discovered that those who were asymptomatic were still highly contagious, and shedding a lot of virus.
“This is the really big shocker here, 75 percent of the most infectious group was asymptomatic,” says Feehan.
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