Coronavirus Antibody Testing Shows Lower Fatality Rate For Infection : Shots - Health News - NPR

People line up in mid-April in Chelsea, Mass., to get antibody tests for the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

People line up in mid-April in Chelsea, Mass., to get antibody tests for the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

"The current best estimates for the infection fatality risk are between 0.5% and 1%," says Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

But even a virus with a fatality rate less than 1% presents a formidable threat, Rivers says.

"It doesn't capture the vast number of people out there who might be infected but not seeking medical care," he says.

"That 188,000 people represented about 11 times more people than conventional selective testing had identified in the state to that point," Menachemi says.

And the data allowed them to calculate something called the infection fatality rate — the odds that an infected person will die.

Indiana's infection fatality rate turned out to be about 0.58%, or roughly one death for every 172 people who got infected.

In New York, for example, an antibody study indicated the state has an infection fatality rate around 0.5%.

Studies in Florida and California have suggested even lower fatality rates, but the results are less certain, Rivers says.

"They may have enrolled people who are more likely to have been infected than would be ideal," she says, which would lead to an overestimate of infections and an underestimate of the infection fatality rate.

should expect different infection fatality rates, says Juliette Unwin, a research fellow at Imperial College London.

To get a more precise estimate of infections and the infection fatality rate nationwide, the National Institutes of Health has launched an antibody study that will test 10,000 people