HARLEM, NY — Most Harlem ZIP codes have seen an uptick in the percentage of coronavirus cases coming back positive, part of a trend that has alarmed health officials, according to city data released Thursday.
Estimating the size and infection severity of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic is made challenging by inconsistencies in available data. The number of COVID-19 deaths is often used as a key indicator for the epidemic size, but observed deaths represent only a minority of all infections1,2.
Additionally, the heterogeneous burden in nursing homes and variable reporting of deaths in elderly individuals can hamper direct comparisons across countries of the underlying level of transmission and mortality rates3. Here we use age-specific COVID-19 death data from 45 countries and the results of 22 seroprevalence studies to investigate the consistency of infection and fatality patterns across multiple countries.
We find that the age distribution of deaths in younger age groups (<65 years) is very consistent across different settings and demonstrate how this data can provide robust estimates of the share of the population that has been infected.
As rapid coronavirus tests are becoming more widely available, delivering results in minutes for patients in doctor's offices, nursing homes, schools and even the White House, officials warn of a significant undercount, blurring the virus's spread nationally and in communities where such tests are more commonly used.
Public health officials say that antigen tests, which are faster than polymerase chain reaction (P.C.R.) tests but less able to detect low levels of the virus, are an important tool for limiting the spread of the coronavirus. But they caution that with inconsistent public reporting, the case undercount may worsen as more “point-of-care” antigen tests, as well as D.I.Y. and home test kits, come on the market.
“We want to be sure that we’re not now saying, ‘there’s no disease,’ when there is lots of disease. All that’s happened is that the science with which we identify it has evolved,” said Janet Hamilton, the executive director of the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists, the group that helps the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention define cases of the coronavirus....
As coronavirus infections in Europe increase, several countries are imposing new lockdowns to curb the spread of the virus that has claimed close to 219,228 lives in the continent so far. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a strict monthlong lockdown similar to the spring lockdown.
