Antibody study suggests COVID-19 infections underestimated

Rice, Baylor work with city to find disease in Houston four times greater than testing showed. A monthslong study to determine the number of Houstonians carrying COVID-19 antibodies revealed infections may have been four times greater than viral tests showed, according to collaborators at the Houston Health Department, Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine. Data released by the city today is based on blood collected from volunteers in randomly selected households and tested for the presence of COVID-19 antibodies, an indication of previous infection. Statistician Katherine Ensor of Rice's Brown School of Engineering and Loren Hopkins , chief environmental science officer for the Houston Health Department and a professor in the practice of statistics at Rice, are part of the project to better estimate the spread of the coronavirus. Samples from 678 residents collected between Sept. 8-19 showed a higher proportion of individuals with COVID-19 antibodies lived in high-positivity-rate areas (18%) of the city than those who lived in low-positivity-rate areas (10%). In addition, more women (17%) than men (10%) had antibodies, more Hispanics (18%) and Blacks (15%) had antibodies than non-Hispanic whites (5%), and more people under 40 years of age (17%) than 40 and older (9%) had COVID-19 antibodies in their blood.