A US health official said the number of novel Coronavirus patients in the United States of America (USA) could be ten times higher and more than 20 million people could be infected with the deadly virus.
Robert Redfield, director of the US Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( USFCDCP), was quoted as saying: "According to our accurate estimates, there are currently 10 other cases for each registered case."
Redfield stated that between 92-95% of the population of the United States is still vulnerable to infection with the virus, indicating that this evaluation depends upon blood tests for antibodies, because there are 10 antibodies for each A confirmed case of infection.
At the same time, USFCDCP emphasized that pregnant women face a greater risk of developing serious diseases.
He did not agree that a second epidemiological wave was observed in the country, saying in this regard: "We are not talking about a second wave now, we are still in the first wave. The first wave takes different forms."
On Thursday, the United States recorded the largest single death toll since the start of the pandemic.
Well-informed American sources confirmed that about 40,000 new infections (39,818) were recorded on Thursday. The United States also recorded 36,000 new cases of COVID-19, on Wednesday.
The new cases are concentrated in states that either survived the outbreak initially or moved early to lift restrictions designed to curb the spread of the virus.
Senior US administration officials said that government experts believe that more than 20 million Americans may have been infected with the Corona virus, 10 times the official statistics, indicating that a large number of people are infected with or have contracted the disease without symptoms.
The officials added that this estimate reached by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is based on serology checks used to monitor antibodies that show whether a person has contracted the disease.
The officials said in a statement to a small group of reporters on Wednesday evening that the estimate depends on the product of multiplying the number of known cases, which ranges between 2.3 and 2.4 million cases, by the average rate of antibodies shown by serology tests.
If this is true, the death toll from the disease in the United States is lower than thought.
The country has recorded more than 120,000 Americans killed by the virus since the outbreak began earlier this year.
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