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Danish health agency says 400,000 could have been infected

The Local Denmark
The Local Denmark - [email protected]
Danish health agency says 400,000 could have been infected
The estimate is built in part on analysis of 1,000 samples of blood given by donors. Photo: Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau Scanpix

Denmark's infectious diseases agency SSI has estimated that the true number of people who have had coronavirus is between 30 and 80 times larger than the roughly 5,000 who have so far tested positive.

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This means that as many as 400,000 people in the country could have already been infected with the virus. 
 
The shock figure, which draws on analysis of blood donors in the country, was included in a status report published on Tuesday by the Danish Health Authority. 
 
"There is a lot of contagion in Danish society, and there is a huge dark figure," Kåre Mølbak, the agency's head, told the Berlingske newspaper. 
 
"In the blood donor studies that have been done, you can see that maybe 70 times more people have had the infection than we can see in the statistics." 
 
A study of 1,000 blood donations given between April 1 and April 3 found that 3.5 percent had been infected with the virus, which  would indicate that 65,000 people had probably already been infected by March 26. 
 
SSI's estimate also drew on studies made in Germany and Iceland. 
 

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