Here is a new preprint study about the tremendous undercounting of cases during the last couple months. Here is the main takeaway from the article (emphasis mine):
“We found a high prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection during the BA.2/BA.2.12.1 surge among adult New Yorkers in late April and early May, 2022 [April 23 to May 8].
We estimate that 22.1% of adult New Yorkers, approximately 1.5 million adults, had SARS-CoV-2 infection during the two study week period, when the prevalence of the more transmissible BA.2.12.1 subvariant was 20% and increasing rapidly. The estimate of 1.5 million infections is about
31-fold higher than the 49,253 cases in the official NYC case counts and suggests a vast underestimate of the magnitude of this surge
. This gap between official case counts and actual burden of infection appears to be widening with time, as our prior similar survey during the BA.1 surge in NYC estimated that reported cases were 3-4 times lower than the true number of infections.”
“The estimate of 22.1% includes: 1) 11.4% (95%CI 8.4%-14.3%) who were positive based on one or more tests with a health care or testing provider (confirmed cases); 2) 6.5% (95%CI 4.2%-8.8%) who were positive exclusively based on one or more at-home rapid tests (probable cases); and 3) 4.2% (95%CI 1.8%-6.7%) who met the definition for possible SARS-CoV-2 infection based on having COVID-like symptoms and a close contact with a confirmed/probable case.”
Importance Routine case surveillance data for SARS-CoV-2 are incomplete, biased, missing key variables of interest, and may be unreliable for both timely surge detection and understanding the burden of infection. Objective To determine the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection during the Omicron...
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