Latest study shows almost 6% of people in Catalonia have Covid-19 antibodies

5.9% of residents in Catalonia and 5.2% of people throughout Spain have generated coronavirus antibodies, according to the third wave of results from a seroprevalence study.

The study by the Spanish health ministry and the Carlos III Health Institute reveals that 7.3% of the population in the province of Barcelona have coronavirus antibodies.

The other provinces in Catalonia registered much lower figures: 2.7% in Girona, 2.9% in Lleida, and 1.5% in Tarragona.

Presenting the results at a press conference on Monday, the director general of the Spanish Center for Epidemiology, Marina Pollán, said that in 14% of cases where antibodies had been detected in the first round of the study, they were undetectable or had been lost in this third iteration.

The director of the Carlos III Institute, Raquel Yotti, called for caution and said that negative results following on from previous positive results "highlights the uncertainty" of the disease and indicates that immunity "may be incomplete" or "transitory".

"Those who have gone through the illness should not relax," she warned.