Between 5 and 8% of the American population has been infected with the coronavirus, estimated on Thursday the director of the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC), Robert Redfield, who insists that the pandemic is far from being stopped in the country.
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Over 20 million people
"Between 5, 6, 7 or 8% of Americans have had an infection, whether they know it or not", that is to say more than 20 million people and on the order of ten times more than the reported number of cases (2 , 4 million), said Robert Redfield during a conference call with reporters. These figures are based on serological tests carried out on samples representative of the population, and which make it possible to see if the immune system of a person has previously come into contact with the virus.
Probably higher in severely affected areas
They have not been officially published by the CDC, but correspond to the orders of magnitude observed in various countries or places where serological studies have been carried out. It is a national average. In some very affected places, the rate is undoubtedly higher, like in New York, where the governor announced that more than 20% of the inhabitants of the city in total had contracted the virus.
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"This pandemic is not over"
The figure of 8% shows, therefore, that more than nine in ten Americans remain susceptible to contamination. "This pandemic is not over," said Robert Redfield. "The most powerful tool at our disposal is physical distancing," he said, as contagions are on the rise in much of the United States, in the south and in the west, from regions which had been relatively spared in the spring, but where the wearing of masks and other barrier measures are not widely adopted.
Robert Redfield has moreover put the current increase in the number of cases, similar to the records of April, on the account of better screening, since the United States performs half a million tests per day. "Today we see more viruses in younger people, and fewer people have to be hospitalized and die, but I'm not saying this to minimize it," he said.