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. 2021 Apr 7;27(7):1039.e1–1039.e7. doi: 10.1016/j.cmi.2021.03.009

Table 1.

SARS-CoV-2 population-based prevalence studies on a probability-based sample with results published in peer-reviewed literature until 31 January 2021

Country SARS-CoV-2 serology assay Period of sampling Study sample size (no. tested) Age range (years) Seroprevalence estimate (% seropositive, 95% CI) Reference
Slovenia Euroimmun ELISA;
Roche Elecsys-N and Elecsys-S ECLIA
20 April to 1 May (first round); 17 October to 10 November 2020 (second round) 1316 (first round)
1211 (second round)
0–99 First round (April 2020): 0.87% (95% HDI 0.40%–1.38%);
Second round (October/November 2020): unadjusted lower limit of seroprevalence on 11 November 2020: 4.06% (95% HDI 2.97%–5.16%) and unadjusted upper limit of seroprevalence on 3 October 2020: 4.29% (95% HDI 3.18%–5.47%)
Maver and Oštrbenk Valenčak et al., 2020 [6]
Iceland Roche Elecsys-N ECLIA;
Wantai ELISA
3 April to 8 July 2020 30 576:
a) 1237 recovered
b) 4222 quarantined
c) 23 452 unknown exposure
ND Overall seroprevalence estimate for Iceland: 0.9% (95% CI 0.8%–0.9%)
a) recovered persons: 91.1% (95% CI 89.4%–92.6%)
b) quarantined persons: 2.3% (95% CI 1.9%–2.8%)
c) persons with unknown exposure: 0.3% (95% CI 0.2%–0.4%)
Gudbjartsson et al., 2020 [7]
Spain Orient Gene Biotech POCT;
Abbott IgG CLIA
27 April to 11 May 2020 51 958 <1 to >90 POCT: 5.0% (95% CI 4.7%–5.4%); Abbott: 4.6% (95% CI 4.3%–5.0%), with a specificity–sensitivity range of 3.7% (95% CI 3.3%–4.0%; both tests positive) to 6.2% (95% CI 5.8%–6.6%; either test positive) Pollán et al., 2020 [8]
USA (Indiana) CLIA (not specifically defined) 25–29 April 2020 3629 ≥12 1.01% (95% CI 0.76%–1.45%); estimated overall population SARS-CoV-2 prevalence of active or current infection: 2.79% (95% CI 2.02%–3.70%) Menachemi et al., 2020 [9]
USA (Los Angeles County, CA) Premier Biotech POCT 10–14 April 2020 863 ≥18 4.06% (exact binomial CI, 2.84%–5.60%); adjusted unweighted and weighted seroprevalence: 4.34% (bootstrap CI, 2.76%–6.07%) and 4.65% (bootstrap CI, 2.52%–7.07%) Sood et al., 2020 [10]
Switzerland (Geneva) Euroimmun ELISA 6 April to 9 May 2020 2766 (1339 households in 5 weeks) ≥5 1st to 5th week, respectively: 4.8% (95% CI 2.4%–8.0%, n = 341); 8.5% (95% CI 5.9%–11.4%, n = 469); 10.9% (95% CI 7.9%–14.4%, n = 577); 6.6% (95% CI 4.3%–9.4%, n = 604); 10.8% (95% CI 8.2%–13.9%, n = 775) Stringhini et al., 2020 [4]
India Kavach ELISA; Euroimmun ELISA 11 May to 4 June 2020 28 000 ≥18 0.73% after adjusting for test performance (95% CI 0.34%–1.13%) Muhrekar et al., 2020 [11]
Faroe Islands Wantai ELISA 27 April to 1 May 2020 1075 0–100 0.6% (exact binomial 95% CI 0.2%–1.2%);
0.7% (bootstrap 95% CI 0.3%–1.3%) after adjustment for test sensitivity and specificity
Petersen et al., 2020 [12]
Brazil Wondfo POCT 14–21 May 2020; 4–7 June 2020 25 025 and 31 165 ≥1 Corrected prevalence estimates: 1.6% (95% CI 1.4%–1.8%) in the first survey and 2.8% (95% CI 2.5%–3.1%) in the second; city-level prevalence ranged from 0 to 25.4% in both surveys Hallal et al., 2020 [13]
Iran Pishtaz Teb ELISA 17 April to 2 June 2020 3530 from the general population, 5372 from a high-risk group ND Overall population weight-adjusted and test performance-adjusted seroprevalence: 17.1% (95% CI 14.6%–19.5%); in the high-risk population: 20.0% (95% CI 18.5%–21.7%) Poustchi et al., 2020 [14]
Netherlands Laboratory-developed immunoassay 31 March to 11 May 2020 3207 2–90 Overall weighted seroprevalence: 2.8% (95% CI 2.1%–3.7%) Vos et al., 2020 [15]
Italy (northeast region) Abbott Architect CLIA 5–15 May 2020 6075 >10 23.1% (95% CI 22.0%–24.1%) Stefanelli et al., 2020 [16]
China Innovita colloidal gold detection kit 6 March to 3 May 2020 63 107: Hubei 49 257; other 29 provinces 13 850 17–63 All of China: 0.74%; Wuhan: 1.68%; Hubei province without Wuhan: 0.59%; other 29 provinces: 0.38% Duan et al., 2021 [17]

Abbreviations: CLIA, chemiluminescent microparticle immunoassay; ECLIA, electrochemiluminescence assay; ELISA, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay; HDI, high-density interval; ND, no data; POCT, point-of-care test; SARS-CoV-2, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2.

Non-peer-reviewed seroprevalence surveys with results deposited in open-access preprint repositories or posted at websites and those performed retrospectively on residual serum samples were not considered eligible. A more detailed summary of each study is provided in the Supplementary material (Table S6).