Unrecorded cases: one in five unvaccinated people is infected

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21.7 percent of the unvaccinated and officially unrecovered have contracted Corona at some point after all. That corresponded to about 400,000 people at the beginning of January, the health ministry said of a recent Covid 19 dark figure study released Tuesday. It involved testing a representative portion of the population for antibodies to the coronavirus to get a more accurate picture of previously acquired immunity.1,200 blood samples.
Between Nov. 30, 2021, and Jan. 13, 2022, about 1,200 blood samples were analyzed by Statistics Austria in cooperation with the Medical University of Vienna, the Austrian Society for Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, and the Ministry of Defense. This revealed that in the group that had never been vaccinated and was not officially known to be recovered (about 20.8 percent of the total population), approximately one in five had experienced a SARS-CoV-2 infection. Among children and adolescents, the seroprevalence at the time of the survey was 23.2 percent, and among persons 18 years and older, 20.3 percent, explained Statistics Austria Director-General Tobias Thomas.

Dark figure
“Thanks to the study now available, we now know that the number of unreported cases in that fifth of the population that has never been vaccinated and is not officially known to have recovered is relatively low at 21.7 percent,” emphasized Health Minister Wolfgang Mückstein. He said this finding once again shows that the safest and most sustainable way of immunization is vaccination.

“The results of this study show that even among young people of school age, the number of those who have already undergone an infection is comparatively low. I, therefore, appeal to parents to have their children vaccinated from the age of five, even if they are not yet covered by compulsory vaccination because of their age,” said Education Minister Martin Polaschek (ÖVP).