https://ktla.com/news/local-news/l-a-county-officials-to-provide-latest-update-on-coronavirus-crisis/
While Los Angeles County has reported a total of 13,816 coronavirus cases, early results from an antibody study conducted with the University of Southern California shows that hundreds of thousands more could have had COVID-19 in the past, officials announced Monday.
So far, 863 L.A. County residents have been tested between April 10 and 14 as part of the study.
The study estimates a prevalence of COVID-19 antibodies in the county to be 4.1%, with a range that could be as low as 2.8% and as high as 5.6%, when you factor in the reliability of the tests.
An estimated 221,000 adults to 442,000 adults at the high end may have been infected at some point before April 9 with COVID-19, suggesting that the number of total people in the county with a past or current infection is 28 to 55 times higher than the number of reported positive cases, Dr. Barbara Ferrer, L.A. County’s public health director said Monday.
“Although I report every day that we have thousands of thousands of people that have tested positive, the serology testing lets us know that we have hundreds of thousands of people that have already developed antibodies to the virus because at some point in time over the last couple of months, they have in fact been infected with COVID-19,” Ferrer said.
But having up to that many people who may have already had the illness means that the fatality rate from the virus is much lower than originally believed, Neeraj Sood, the USC scientist leading the study said Monday.