Ten Percent

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Anchor lead: Estimates are that about 10% of the US population has been exposed to Sars-CoV2, Elizabeth Tracey reports

Seroprevalence refers to looking for antibodies to an infection in a population, with the most recent study in the US finding that only 10% of us have antibodies to Sars-CoV2, and that’s a far cry from what most experts say is needed to slow down infections. Brian Garibaldi, a critical care medicine expert at Johns Hopkins, comments.

Garibaldi: There is evidence that people’s antibodies wane over time. Depending on when you do these seroprevalence studies you could be missing people who have been exposed to the virus, are no longer mounting antibody response. In most people there are other immune memory processes that would potentially protect you against another reexposure to the virus so it doesn’t tell the whole story to know what the seroprevalence rates are but I think it certainly tells us right now that we’re, despite the many infections that we’ve had across the US, we’re not anywhere close to being able to say that this pandemic is behind us.  :30

Garibaldi says many places throughout the country are once again reporting increasing rates of infection. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.