While Covid-19 deaths across the state have begun to level off, the “number of lives lost is still breathtakingly tragic,” Cuomo said. The state’s mortality rates remains persistently high, at 7.4% with at least 19,453 fatalities and 263,754 confirmed cases, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The antibody testing indicates that the actual death rate is far lower, less than 1%, Cuomo said.
The testing results also may be artificially high because “these are people who were out and about shopping,” Cuomo added. “They were not people who were in their home, they were not people isolated, they were not people who were quarantined who you could argue probably had a lower rate of infection because they wouldn’t come out of the house.”
While Cuomo cautioned that the data was preliminary, he also said the 3,000 test sample was a “significant data set.”
On Sunday, Cuomo said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the state’s antibody test that will provide the “first true snapshot” of how many people have been infected with Covid-19 in New York. State officials don’t know the true number of infections because they haven’t been able to conduct diagnostic coronavirus testing on a large scale, Cuomo said.
Global health officials have questioned the reliability of antibody testing, however, and whether it can accurately determine whether someone is immune to the disease. World Health Organization said on Friday that there’s no evidence serological tests can show whether a person has immunity or is no longer at risk of becoming reinfected.
Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO’s emergencies program, said scientists are also studying how long any potential immunity might last.
Source Article from https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/23/new-york-antibody-study-estimates-13point9percent-of-residents-have-had-the-coronavirus-cuomo-says.html
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