"This week, we published our findings after two weeks of universal screening at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center.
In our area, which includes upper Manhattan and the Bronx, about 15 percent of patients who came to us for delivery tested positive for the coronavirus, but around 88 percent of these women had no symptoms of infection.
That means 13.5 percent of all our patients during this time were infected with the coronavirus but weren’t exhibiting symptoms.
Our findings may shed light on the overall rate of infected people in New York City.
Our screenings suggest more people are infected with the virus but are not becoming sick.
We cannot say for sure how our findings apply to the general population because our group was made up of young, relatively healthy, pregnant women in an area of high virus prevalence.
But this is one of the first opportunities to understand covid-19, the disease the virus causes, in a somewhat random sample of the U.S. population.
Our findings have huge implications for everyday life on a labor and delivery unit, as well as potential broader implications."