The Center for Disease Control & Prevention issued a report Tuesday stating that the number of coronavirus cases may be from two to thirteen times greater than previously known, while most Americans still lack antibodies to fight off the virus, according to reporting by the Washington Post.

The CDC used data obtained from blood draws in ten different regions of the country, identifying those people with coronavirus antibodies indicative of being exposed to the disease.  The study was reported in JAMA Internal Medicine and on the CDC website.

Roughly 4 million people have tested positive for the coronavirus in the United States.  If the CDC number are accurate, that vastly undercounts the number of actual infections, which could range from 8 to 52 million.

Even at 52 million, that means only about 16% of the United States population of 328 million have been exposed to the coronavirus.

While that number bodes well for statistics like case fatality rates, if also demonstrates that additional waves of the virus around the country could have continued devastating impacts on society and the economy as more people are still susceptible to the virus.

“The study rebukes the idea that current population-wide levels of acquired immunity (so-called herd immunity) will pose any substantial impediment to the continued propagation” of the virus, at least for now, wrote Tyler S. Brown and Rochelle Walensky, infectious-disease specialists at Massachusetts General Hospital, in an accompanying editorial. “These data should also quickly dispel myths that dangerous practices like ‘COVID parties’ are either a sound or safe way to promote herd immunity.”