Last week, researchers with Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) asked people on the streets of Chelsea if they would be willing to take a blood test to look for coronavirus antibodies. The results of the limited study found that one-third of those tested had antibodies for the virus, meaning they had already caught it and recovered – many of them without feeling any serious symptoms.
Researchers were able to get blood samples from 200 Chelsea residents and 64 were found to have antibodies in their immune system to fight the coronavirus, The Boston Globe reported. The 200 who allowed themselves to get tested appeared healthy to researchers, but the Globe reported that about half of the participants said they had at least one coronavirus symptom in the past month, meaning they probably had COVID-19 but didn’t even realize it because they didn’t get that sick.
“I think it’s both good news and bad news,” Dr. John Iafrate, vice chairman of MGH’s pathology department and the leader of the study, told the Globe. “The bad news is that there’s a raging epidemic in Chelsea, and many people walking on the street don’t know that they’re carrying the virus and that they may be exposing uninfected individuals in their families.”
“On the good-news side, it suggests that Chelsea has made its way through a good part of the epidemic,” Iafrate added. “They’re probably further along than other towns.”
Chelsea, the Globe reported, has Massachusetts’ highest rate of confirmed COVID-19 cases, with 39 deaths and 712 confirmed cases – for a rate of infection at about 2%. – READ MORE
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