A study conducted by Stanford researchers found nearly 10 percent of those tested exhibited coronavirus antibodies. The study was published in the Lancet earlier this week.
The study involved dialysis patients and randomly tested more than 28,000 samples. The samples were taken in July as part of the patients’ treatment.
The data found stark differences based on U.S. regions. The northeast had approximately 27 percent of patients with coronavirus antibodies, compared to 3.5 percent in the west.
The study’s authors stressed that the study oversampled people of color. Racial minorities, the study found, were considerably more likely to have coronavirus antibodies than the rest of the population.
“Uncertainty exists as to whether seroprevalence estimates in the dialysis population can be extrapolated to the U.S. population more broadly,” the study reads.
The study indicated that herd immunity is still far off, as estimates say at a minimum, 50 percent of the U.S. population would need to be infected to reach that level.