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Homburg (dpa / lrs) - In the first wave of the pandemic, only every third infection with the corona virus was discovered in Saarland.
This was found out by a representative antibody study, as the director of the Virological Institute at the Saarland University Medical Center (UKS), Sigrun Smola, announced on Thursday in Homburg.
In the study, the blood of almost 3,000 participants was examined for antibodies against Sars-CoV-2.
The infection rate in Saarland was around one percent by October 2020.
That means that at that time, statistically one in 100 adult Saarlanders had overcome a Sars-CoV-2 infection or had an advanced infection in which the organism had already formed antibodies, said Smola.
However, the rate of officially proven corona infections in Saarland was 0.37 percent in October 2020.
"This means that on average for every person who tested positive there were almost two other people in whom the overcome or advanced Sars-CoV-2 infection was not discovered," she said.
And vice versa: "Only around every third infection with Sars-CoV-2 was detected by a PCR test."
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The study was based on an initiative of the Saar Ministry of Health and the Institute for Virology at the UKS in Homburg.
Saarland was the first and to date the only federal state in which a nationwide coronavirus antibody prevalence study was started.
Its aim was to provide representative results at the state level, but also to provide an assessment of the nationwide situation.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210121-99-121143 / 2
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