500,000 WUHAN RESIDENTS GOT COVID-19, NEARLY 10 TIMES THE OFFICIAL DATA

Nearly 500,000 residents in the Chinese city where the novel coronavirus first emerged may have been infected with COVID-19 -- almost 10 times its official number of confirmed cases, according to a study by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Nectar Gan reported for CNN.

The study used a sample of 34,000 people in the general population in Wuhan -- the original epicenter of the pandemic -- and other cities in Hubei province, as well as Beijing, Shanghai, and the provinces of Guangdong, Jiangsu, Sichuan and Liaoning to estimate COVID-19 infection rates.

The researchers found an antibody prevalence rate of 4.43% for COVID-19 among residents in Wuhan, a metropolis of 11 million people. As of Sunday, Wuhan had reported a total of 50,354 confirmed cases of COVID-19, according to the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission.

The study aimed to estimate the scale of past infections in a population by testing blood serum samples from a pool of people for coronavirus antibodies.

Its findings are not taken to be final statistics of how many people in a given area have been exposed to the virus.

The Chinese CDC said the study was conducted a month after China "contained the first wave of the COVID-19 epidemic."

The prevalence rate outside of Wuhan is significantly lower, the study showed. In other cities in Hubei, only 0.44% of residents surveyed were found to have coronavirus antibodies. Outside the province, antibodies were only detected in two people among the more than 12,000 residents surveyed.

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