Austria’s Ischgl ski resort has record rate of coronavirus antibodies

A study of residents in the Alpine ski resort of Ischgl, the site of Austria’s biggest coronavirus outbreak, has found 42 percent have antibodies for the virus, the highest rate ever found, according to a study published on Thursday.

Thousands of people were infected at the resort earlier this year, and after a lockdown was declared in March, tourists were allowed to leave, fueling the spread of the virus across Europe, Reuters said.

“The seroprevalence of study participants from Ischgl is 42.4 percent,” the director of the Medical University of Innsbruck’s Institute of Virology, Dorothee von Laer, who led the study, said in a statement. Seroprevalence refers to the share of the population carrying antibodies for the virus. “We are dealing in Ischgl with the highest seroprevalence ever proven in a study. Even though at that rate herd immunity cannot be assumed, Ischgl’s population should be protected (from the virus) to a large extent,” she added.

Other researchers have cautioned that it may be too early to draw conclusions from antibody studies, due to test reliability issues and doubts over possible immunity.