OSU team conducts study to track COVID-19 cases and prevalence of antibodies

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — During Thursday's coronavirus briefing, Ohio State University Dr. Abigail Norris-Turner, an infectious disease epidemiologist, spoke about how OSU is tracking coronavirus infections.

Dr. Norris-Turner and her team conducted an antibody study to learn more about the rate at which the virus spreads and create a benchmark for positive results to know more accurately how to track the spread in the coming months.

The purpose of this project was to calculate two specific estimates: active COVID-19 cases and the prevalence of people who have had COVID-19 in the past.

Dr. Norris-Turner and her team conducted the study over 20 days in July 2020 and included a sample of 727 adults.

The team tested 240 census tracts that were geographically representative across the state. Within those 240 census tracts, they randomly sampled households.

Crews first collected a blood sample of those who consented, which they tested for antibodies against COVID-19 and a nasal swab sample to test for an active disease.

The results at the end of the study were combined statistically, meaning the households go into the census tract and the census tract to come up with a state-wide estimate of prevalence.

The study showed that approximately 0.9 percent of Ohioans were likely infected with COVID-19 during the study, and approximately 1.5 percent had prevalence of COVID-19 antibodies during the study period in July.

"We don't have a lot of data to compare our findings to but what we do have suggests that what we found is right along with expectations," Dr. Norris-Turner said. "Those numbers are similar for example to what the Ohio Red Cross is reporting among antibody prevalence among blood donors and just this week the CDC released findings from a large zero-prevalence study that they're doing across the whole country, including in Ohio and our results are also similar to what they found."