Up to 87 percent of infections go undetected

The metropolis of Wuhan was the first major hotspot of the corona pandemic with officially 50,000 infected and 4,000 dead. Apparently, however, these numbers are only a fraction of the actual infections in the region, as researchers now want to find out.

According to a new study, a large part of the cases remained undetected during the Corona outbreak in the metropolis of Wuhan. The study by Chinese scientists, which was published in the journal "Nature", comes to the conclusion that in the first acute phase between January 1 and March 8, up to 87 percent of infections could have remained under the radar.

The researchers came to their knowledge by reconstructing the outbreak in Wuhan using epidemiological and statistical models. Other international studies had previously concluded that many Sars-CoV-2 infections are not recognized, for example because infected people have little or no symptoms.

Around 50,000 infections and almost 4,000 deaths were reported in Wuhan, where the pandemic broke out. No active infection carriers have been reported from the city for months. In June, only 300 asymptomatic infections with the Sars CoV-2 pathogen were discovered in two-week mass tests of almost ten million citizens, as the Xinhua news agency reported.

Overall, China has largely brought the pandemic under control. There are hardly any new infections.