Los Angeles County, California now has more than 9,000 reported cases of COVID-19 disease, but nobody is sure how widespread the infection is. California’s population is 10 million people, and there is still no insight on the official number of people that are infected with the coronavirus or how many people may have antibodies against the disease.
The Los Angeles County Public Health Department and the University of Southern California’s Price School of Public Policy have teamed up to perform large-scale COVID-19 antibody testing. They first tested 900 people at six different drive-thru locations. They will conduct antibody tests every two weeks.
According to Dr. Neeraj Sood, Vice Dean of Research at the Price School, “We've just been testing the sick. So, we truly don't know the true extent of the bulk of the population that might have covered. There might be many people in the population that were asymptomatic, and they survived it. So, having those people in the calculation will help us truly figure out how deadly this epidemic is."
USC is also working with UCLA and Stanford on similar studies in Santa Clara County, where they have managed to test 3,000 people so far. Sood says that those results should be published soon. And, as news travels about the study, people are beginning to volunteer to be tested. The researchers are hoping that their findings will help to show how deadly COVID-19 disease is to the population and when it may end. The study might also provide some insight into how successful social distancing is working to prevent the spread of the virus.