Global COVID infections up to six times higher than reported

Photo: Engin Akyurt/Unsplash - COVID-19 infection rates in the UK, France and Belgium are much higher than reported and up to 17 times higher in Italy, new data shows. Analysis also shows Australia had the best level of detection among 15 countries at the end of April but the rate of infection may still have been five times higher than what was officially reported at the end of August. In a paper published in Royal Society Open Science , researchers from Ikigai Research, The Australian National University (ANU) and the University of Melbourne show infection rates between March and August across 15 countries were on average 6.2 times greater than reported cases. ANU co-author Professor Quentin Grafton said the study estimated the true number of infections across a combined population of over 800 million people in 11 European countries, as well as Australia, Canada, South Korea and the USA. "We found COVID-19 infections are much higher than confirmed cases across many countries, and this has important implications for both control and the probability of infection," Professor Grafton said. "Our analysis has found more than 5.4 million in the UK - 8 per cent of the population - are or have been infected with the coronavirus. "In Australia, our modelling shows the actual rate of infected and recovered people at the end of August may have been five times higher than reported, with 0.48 per cent of the population, or up to 130,000 people possibly infected.