A New York study seeking to measure the spread of the new coronavirus found that 13.9% of 3,000 people tested across the state had signs of the virus, one of the biggest U.S. reviews to date. That implies that about 2.7 million residents may have had Covid-19, Governor Andrew Cuomo said. That’s about 10 times more than the official count based on the state’s testing, which covered mostly very sick patients. The pandemic was more intense in New York City, the hardest-hit area in the U.S. There, 21.2% of people tested positive for a blood marker showing that they had been infected at some point. “We’re going to continue this testing on a rolling basis,” Cuomo said. “We’ll have a larger and larger sample. But I want to see snapshots of what is happening with that rate. Is it going up? Is it flat? Is it going down? And it can really give us data to make decisions.” The study must be analyzed further to give a clearer picture, and it’s possible that it didn’t give a representative sample because it likely missed older people staying home as well as essential workers, Cuomo said. Still, the preliminary results appear to confirm predictions that the virus has infected far more people than New York has been able to diagnose. It also means that the fatality rate is likely lower than implied by merely examining confirmed cases and deaths. If 2.7 million people have been infected, that would put the fatality rate [More]