New York City has released a trove of nearly 1.5 million antibody test results that show what areas have been hit the hardest by COVID-19.
The data showed that the Bronx had the highest number of positive antibody tests out of all of the city’s boroughs. Thirty-three percent of those tested there have already been infected by the coronavirus. The borough with the lowest ratio of positive results was Manhattan, with 19% positivity. In total, the city had a 27% positivity rate, according to the New York Times.
The results showed that some of the positivity rates in the city are correlative with areas that have large households.
The ZIP code with the highest rate is located in the Corona neighborhood, where more than half of the residents had coronavirus antibodies. The neighborhood is largely Hispanic and has a high level of overcrowding in homes. A ZIP code in Brooklyn’s Borough Park neighborhood had nearly 47% positivity. The neighborhood has a large population of Hasidic Jews, many of whom have large household sizes.
While the data, which includes some 1.46 million tests comprising about 15% of the entire city, can help officials analyze the area and plan for future spikes, it also is limited by the fact that it is not a random sample. Most of those who were included in the data had sought out antibody testing.
New York City has had some 235,000 cases of the coronavirus and at 23,642 deaths since the pandemic began, according to a count by the New York Times.
