CDC: 1 in 4 Americans has never caught COVID, after 3 years
From testing roughly 143,000 blood donors nationwide, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 77.5% of surveyed individuals had COVID-19 antibodies, from vaccines, the virus, or both, by the end of 2022.
As it tracks yet more COVID-19 variants, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently reported that — at the end of 2022 — about one in four people 16 years of age and older in the United States had yet to contract the virus. That means 77.5% had antibodies from at least one prior infection. What’s more, 96.7% had antibodies from either getting vaccinated, surviving a bout with COVID, or a combination of both.
This new information is based on final figures from the CDC’s “2022 Nationwide COVID-19 Infection- and Vaccination-Induced Antibody Seroprevalence” study. The percentage of people with antibodies against a virus in their blood is known as seroprevalence. Beginning in January 2022, the longitudinal study of approximately 143,000 blood donors tracked seroprevalence estimates during four three-month periods.
As CBSNews.com reports, “federal officials often cited estimates from these studies in moving to simplify vaccine recommendations and loosen COVID-19 restrictions, as the Biden administration wound down the public health emergency earlier this year.”
During the final study period of October through December 2022, people ages 16 to 29 had the highest seroprevalence estimates, suggesting a greater number of COVID cases in that age group. Americans 65 and older had the lowest seroprevalence estimates.
Related: As pandemic emergencies end, people battling long COVID feel ‘swept under the rug’
In December 2022, the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota reported on a study of serologic testing in which about 44% of adults claimed to have never contracted COVID.
As of late June, the number of COVID-related hospital admissions in the United States was trending downward, with 6,198 per week, according to the CDC, and the total number of vaccine doses distributed was nearing 140 billion. All told, as of June 24, more than 1.13 million Americans had died from the virus, with nearly 6.2 million hospitalized.