Emerging Infectious Diseases (Feb 2024)

Prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 Infection among Children and Adults in 15 US Communities, 2021

  • Jessica Justman,
  • Timothy Skalland,
  • Ayana Moore,
  • Christopher I. Amos,
  • Mark A. Marzinke,
  • Sahar Z. Zangeneh,
  • Colleen F. Kelley,
  • Rebecca Singer,
  • Stockton Mayer,
  • Yael Hirsch-Moverman,
  • Susanne Doblecki-Lewis,
  • David Metzger,
  • Elizabeth Barranco,
  • Ken Ho,
  • Ernesto T.A. Marques,
  • Margaret Powers-Fletcher,
  • Patricia J. Kissinger,
  • Jason E. Farley,
  • Carrie Knowlton,
  • Magdalena E. Sobieszczyk,
  • Shobha Swaminathan,
  • Domonique Reed,
  • Jean De Dieu Tapsoba,
  • Lynda Emel,
  • Ian Bell,
  • Krista Yuhas,
  • Leah Schrumpf,
  • Laura Mkumba,
  • Jontraye Davis,
  • Jonathan Lucas,
  • Estelle Piwowar-Manning,
  • Shahnaz Ahmed

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3201/eid3002.230863
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 30, no. 2
pp. 245 – 254

Abstract

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During January–August 2021, the Community Prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 Study used time/location sampling to recruit a cross-sectional, population-based cohort to estimate SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence and nasal swab sample PCR positivity across 15 US communities. Survey-weighted estimates of SARS-CoV-2 infection and vaccine willingness among participants at each site were compared within demographic groups by using linear regression models with inverse variance weighting. Among 22,284 persons >2 months of age and older, median prevalence of infection (prior, active, or both) was 12.9% across sites and similar across age groups. Within each site, average prevalence of infection was 3 percentage points higher for Black than White persons and average vaccine willingness was 10 percentage points lower for Black than White persons and 7 percentage points lower for Black persons than for persons in other racial groups. The higher prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection among groups with lower vaccine willingness highlights the disparate effect of COVID-19 and its complications.

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