In this paper recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the authors measured antibodies in serum samples from 30,576 persons in Iceland, using six assays (including two pan-immunoglobulin [pan-Ig] assays) determining that the appropriate measure of seropositivity was a positive result with both pan-Ig assays. Moreover, they tested 2102 samples collected from 1237 persons up to 4 months after diagnosis by a quantitative polymerase-chain-reaction (qPCR) assay measuring antibodies in 4222 quarantined persons who had been exposed to SARS-CoV-2 and in 23,452 persons not known to have been exposed. They found that of the 1797 persons who had recovered from SARS-CoV-2 infection, 1107 of the 1215 who were tested (91.1%) were seropositive; antiviral antibody titres assayed by two pan-Ig assays increased during 2 months after diagnosis by qPCR and remained on a plateau for the remainder of the study. Of quarantined persons, 2.3% were seropositive; of those with unknown exposure, 0.3% were positive. They estimate that 0.9% of Icelanders were infected with SARS-CoV-2 and that the infection was fatal in 0.3%. They also estimate that 56% of all SARS-CoV-2 infections in Iceland had been diagnosed with qPCR, 14% had occurred in quarantined persons who had not been tested with qPCR (or who had not received a positive result, if tested), and 30% had occurred in persons outside quarantine and not tested with qPCR. The authors concluded that their results indicate that antiviral antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 did not decline within 4 months after diagnosis estimating that the risk of death from infection was 0.3% and that 44% of persons infected with SARS-CoV-2 in Iceland were not diagnosed by qPCR.
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Observational study: prospective longitudinal cohort