Health department: About 13,450 people in Alachua County already have antibodies to COVID-19

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

At the May 26 Alachua County Commission meeting, Paul Myers, Alachua County Administrator for the Florida Department of Health, gave an update on the COVID-19 situation in the county. Over the past 2 weeks, 46 people have tested positive out of 6,443 tests processed, for a positivity rate of 0.7%.

Myers then presented new information about antibody tests: “Over the weekend, we got some data regarding antibody testing that was conducted across the state… What we have been able to do at the Department of Health is to get data for over 100,000 antibody tests.”

“Now, these are not finger sticks, these are not the rapid tests, but rather most of the data’s coming from Quest and from Labcorp, so these are blood draws that are taken to a laboratory and subjected to improved analytics for what it is we’re trying to accomplish in improving the antibody tests… I would caution that we should not be over-diagnosing this data, because it still is in its infancy, but this is considered to be much more specific and accurate than the rapid tests, again, because these are laboratory tests that are being conducted. 

“And what’s interesting is in the state of Florida, when you take a look at the average positivity rate for the over 100,000 individuals who have presented to Quest and Labcorp, the state positivity rate is 5%, and that’s the same as Alachua County’s positivity rate of 5%. So if we were to assume that the approximately 269,000 individuals in Alachua County, if we had a 5% positivity rate, now you’re looking at about 13,450 individuals who may have antibodies to COVID-19, and we simply cannot test 269,000 people in the county, but this does give us some idea of what the number of individuals that we have out there that may be harboring antibodies to this, and that’s a good thing.

“Studies from across the globe have indicated anywhere from 2% to 5%, and so this is in line with what we’re seeing with the data that is coming out.”

Myers said our infection rate (percent of active-infection tests that have come back positive) is about half the state’s rate, the hospitalization rate is about the same, and the death rate is “much less” than the state. The population mortality rate in the state is almost 5 times Alachua County’s population mortality rate. The median age for Alachua County is also lower than the state’s median age of cases.

27 people died from influenza in 2018 in Alachua County

Myers also compared the COVID-19 mortality rate to Alachua County’s influenza mortality rate, but he wasn’t specific about the numbers, so we requested the information from the state. Alachua County had 27 deaths from influenza in 2018, the most recent year for which data is available. That was a mortality rate of 10 per 100,000, compared to COVID-19’s mortality rate, so far, of 2.6 per 100,000.

7 deaths have been attributed to COVID-19 in Alachua County, so if 13,450 people have had the disease, the infection fatality rate here is 0.05%.

The 5-day rolling average is also trending downward. 

The hospital trend graph is also new. “It seems like we hit our peak in mid-to-late April… so, again, that tends to be trending downward.”

Myers emphasized throughout the presentation that Alachua County meets all criteria for continuing to re-open. 

Commissioner Ken Cornell went back to the antibody testing: “I kind of did the math on that. We’ve got 370 confirmed cases. Are we saying that at some point, that we had 36 times the amount of cases that we just didn’t know about?”

Myers responded, “Yes, and I don’t think that’s surprising, given the characteristics of this disease, and we have all seen the asymptomatic piece of this disease, which is causing a lot of concern. But on the other hand, I think that a lot of the data indicates that many of us have been exposed to—you know, there are over 30 coronaviruses that are out there, so many of us have been exposed to those, so the thought process right now is that for those who are healthy, for those who are not in that vulnerable population that we continue to focus on, that the vast majority of are us not going to show any symptoms because our bodies have seen something similar to it in the past, and we’re fighting it off very effectively.”