In Northern Italy, almost 70% of the 60 volunteers for blood donation test positive to COVID-19 antigens

In Northern Italy, 60 volunteers reported to donate blood -- all feeling/appearing healthy. Reddit reports 40 of them had positive antigen tests to COVID-19. This means that they had been infected by COVID-19, and were in the process of healing without knowing because they were asymptomatic. This gives hope that the number of asymptomatic patients is much larger than previously believed, and that the drop in the death-rate in Northern Italy could be because herd immunity has been reached. This might also mean that the mortality is much lower than the 1% scientists seem to be oscillating around and definitely lower than WHO's 3%. Perhaps Mihai's 0.2% is an upper bound after all.

Of course, 60 is a small number, but if blood tests are performed on a larger segment of the population like Germany proposes -- to choose 100 000 random people from a big city -- then they could determine whether quarantine should continue or not. There is also the question of how long it takes to develop antibodies vs. antigen to the virus even when the infection is asymptomatic. Given the increase in the power of the mafia in Southern Italy, and the fact that the numbers are dropping, Italy needs to plan a way out of this, while relying on antigen/antibody data from some relatively large random selection of people and NOT on apparent statistics done on patients who enter ICU, whose average age is in the early 60s. Beyond Easter, it seems reasonable to continue to quarantine elderly people and those with heath conditions, but leave the rest to slowly restart their lives while maintaining social distancing as much as possible.

I thank my long term collaborator -- Jayashree Balakrishna -- for pointing this article out.