Study Warns Number of U.S. COVID-19 Cases Much Higher Than Reported
Researchers from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center estimate that there could have been more than 9,000 cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. as of March 1, a substantially higher figure than the 423 confirmed cases the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Monday.
The study used air traffic data from Wuhan, China, to the U.S. prior to Jan. 23, when the Chinese government locked down that city, to estimate the number of cases of COVID-19 likely to have spread across the U.S. since then. Based on the coronavirus's transmission dynamics, the researchers calculated that there were between 1,043 and 9,484 cases in the U.S. on March 1.
The low end of that range was based on the assumption that preventative measures, such as quarantines and screening of international travelers at airports, had been able to reduce the transmissibility by as much as 25%. The high end assumed no intervention. The researchers noted that the wide difference between those estimates pointed up the need for governments to take concerted preventative measures.
Source Fool.com
