Antibodies to coronavirus found in half of patients in the Urals and Siberia

According to RBC, citing data from medical research, patients from Siberia and the Urals, who were tested in the Invitro laboratories for antibodies to coronavirus infection, have more than 50% positive results. This does not mean that more than 50% of the population had been ill: the conclusions were made on the basis of analyzes of only those people who turned to clinics for tests, therefore it would be correct to talk about the level of infection among patients, and not among the general population.

According to the results of research in December this year, the maximum daily number of people with positive tests for coronavirus infection was detected in Novosibirsk - 62%. It is followed by Krasnoyarsk - 58%; Omsk - 56%; Barnaul - 55% and Irkutsk - 54%.

In the Urals, Yekaterinburg is in the lead with 52%. Chelyabinsk is next - 57%; Tyumen - 53%; Magnitogorsk - 57% and Surgut - 52%.

Unlike the cities of Siberia, the results of Moscow and St. Petersburg for antibodies look different.

“Since May of this year, more than 286 thousand tests have been performed in Moscow. Of these, 17.7% were positive. The average daily rate of positive results in December was 30%”, - RBC reports.

In St. Petersburg, over the past six months, 101 thousand tests for antibodies were done, of which only 25% were positive. On average, 38% of positive results for COVID-19 are detected in St. Petersburg per day.

As the researchers note, the difference between capital cities and regions is explained by the fact that the coverage of testing does not coincide: in capital cities it is much higher than in the periphery. A significant proportion of people do tests there "just in case" or after returning from travel. In this regard, it is too early to draw conclusions about the total proportion of those who have recovered in Siberia and the Urals. In total, over 1.23 million tests for antibodies of class G (IgG) to coronavirus infection have been done in the country since the beginning of the pandemic in Invitro laboratories.

The average number of positive results is 25.1%. At the start of the testing campaign, which started in May, the positive percentage was 13.2%. In August, it rose to 17.9%, and by the end of November it exceeded 27%. According to doctors, the autumn wave of coronavirus incidence turned out to be much more massive than the spring one.

Now the country has begun to form an "immune layer" of people resistant to coronavirus infection. However, scientists do not yet know how long their immunity will last. In a number of regions of the country, cases of re-infection with coronavirus have been recorded.