Antibody study estimates 13.9% of New York residents have had COVID-19

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo speaks during a press briefing on COVID-19 on Thursday 23, April 2020.

An estimated 13.9% of the New York residents have likely had COVID-19, according to preliminary results of coronavirus antibody testing released by Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Thursday.

The state randomly testes 3,000 people at grocery stores and shopping locations across 19 countries in 40 localities to see if they had the antibodies to fight COVID-19, which translates to them having contracted the disease and recovered from it.

The results differed across the state with the largest concentration of positive antibody tests found in New York City at 21.2%. In Long Island, 16.7% of the people tested were positive and in Westchester, where the state's first major outbreak originated, 11.7% of the tests were positive. The Covid-19 pandemic across the rest of the state is relatively contained with just 3.6% of positive test results.

"What we found so far is that the state-wide number is 13.9% tested positive for having the antibodies," Governor Cuomo said. "They were infected three weeks ago, four weeks ago, five weeks ago, six weeks ago, but they had the virus, they developed the antibodies and they are now recovered."

New York is the epicenter of the United States' COVID-19 outbreak, having registered more than 15,000 deaths.

Cuomo however noted that the testing results may be skewed because “these are people who were out and about shopping,”

"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."

Source(s): CNBC