Abstract
The world is combating an ongoing COVID-19 pandemic with health-care systems, society and economies impacted in an unprecedented way. It is unclear how many people have contracted the causative coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) unknowingly and are asymptomatic. Therefore, reported COVID-19 cases do not reflect the true scale of outbreak. Here we present the prevalence and distribution of antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 in a healthy adult population of the Netherlands, which is a highly affected country, using a high-performance immunoassay. Our results indicate that one month into the outbreak (i) the seroprevalence in the Netherlands was 2.7% with substantial regional variation, (ii) the hardest-hit areas showed a seroprevalence of up to 9.5%, (iii) the seroprevalence was sex-independent throughout age groups (18–72 years), and (iv) antibodies were significantly more often present in younger people (18–30 years). Our study provides vital information on the extent of exposure to SARS-CoV-2 in a country where social distancing is in place.
Highlights
The world is combating an ongoing COVID-19 pandemic with health-care systems, society and economies impacted in an unprecedented way
The reported COVID-19 cases do not reflect the true scale of outbreak[7,8,9,10,11]
If immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 are similar when compared to other coronaviruses, infected individuals may be less susceptible to reinfection for months to years, reducing the risk of severe COVID-19 and limiting the possibility of spreading the virus[14,15]
Summary
The world is combating an ongoing COVID-19 pandemic with health-care systems, society and economies impacted in an unprecedented way. It is unclear how many people have contracted the causative coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) unknowingly and are asymptomatic. The virus has since spread globally by person-to-person transmission, resulting in an ongoing pandemic impacting public health, health-care systems, society and the economy across the world[1,2,3,4]. The HIT of SARS-CoV-2 is estimated at 50 to 67%18,19 This relies on simplified assumptions, such as homogeneous population mixing and uniform sterilizing immunity in recovered individuals across demographic groups, which are unlikely to hold true. The HIT provides an indication of the minimum proportion of a population that would need to be immune until herd immunity could be achieved in the absence of a vaccine
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