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Austrian Ski Resort Study Shows Pervasive Coronavirus Spread

Austrian Ski Resort Study Shows Pervasive Coronavirus Spread

The Austrian ski resort of Ischgl, an early European coronavirus hotspot, may have the world’s highest Covid infection rate with 42% of residents showing signs of antibodies in a study.

The prevalence rate is the highest recorded in scientific literature so far, said Dorothee van Laer, a virologist at the Medical University of Innsbruck who led the study, citing local surveys in Switzerland’s Groeden with 27% and Geneva with 10%. Other places may have higher rates, but none that have been observed under scientific conditions, she said in an online press conference.

Austrian Ski Resort Study Shows Pervasive Coronavirus Spread

The disease probably started spreading among locals at the resort, nicknamed the Ibiza of the Alps for its party atmosphere, along with visitors from Germany, Norway, Iceland and other countries weeks before the first positive tests were recorded in March, according to the scientist.

“The virus has circulated under the radar screen as early as the second half of February according to all our research,” von Laer said. Her team of researchers plans to help the village by testing tourists arriving in the coming season, she said.

Tourism and health managers from Ischgl and the Tyrol province are being investigated for failing to shut bars and hotels earlier than mid-March, which may have helped propagate thousands of cases around the world.

The researchers collected blood samples from 1,473 people, or almost 80% of Ischgl’s residents, for a week ending April 27. The number of those who tested positive for the antibodies, which arise after infection, was six times higher than those who’d officially tested positive for the virus itself.

The most common symptoms recorded by the patients included loss of sense of taste and smell, fever and coughing. Only nine adults in the entire sample received hospital treatment.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.