Between July 29 and August 4, Testing Dropped 8 Percent Nationally Because Americans Have Become Discouraged With Long Wait Times
This Is Likely Causing an Artificial Decline in Reported Cases
However, 32 States Still Have Increasing Test Positivity Rates
Dr. Jha: Increasing Test Positivity Is “a Really Bad Sign”
One American Still Dying From Virus Every 80 Seconds
For weeks, President Trump has called for the country to “slow the testing down.” Less testing, he falsely claimed, would result in fewer cases.
Now, President Trump has made his fantasy a reality. After failing to build out the United States’ testing infrastructure, what testing capacity exists is crumbling as Americans turn away from long lines and delayed results. It all serves to cause infections to wrongly appear to be on the decline.
It’s just what Donald Trump asked for, but it’s nothing to be proud of: Despite declines manufactured by bad data, the virus isn’t going away. Community spread is still out of control, death rates are still rising and the United States still has the worst outbreak in the world.
Despite the United States Having the Worst Outbreak in the World, Testing Across the Country Has Crumbled in the Last Two Weeks
Testing Declined Nationally By 8 Percent Between July 29 And August 4.
- “But delays and shortages are still a problem. The nation’s weekly average number of tests fell by nearly 8% from July 29 to August 4, according to data from Pantheon Macroeconomics. Testing per capita also declined in at least six states — Alabama, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Utah, and Washington — over the last two weeks. Across the country, people are waiting weeks to get test results, since companies like LabCorp and Quest are struggling to keep up given the rapid spread of the virus.” [Business Insider, 8/6/20]
Testing Has Dropped Off In Twenty-Two States, As Americans Become Discouraged Over Wait Times And Delayed Results.
- “U.S. testing for the coronavirus is dropping even as infections remain high and the death toll rises by more than 1,000 a day, a worrisome trend that officials attribute largely to Americans getting discouraged over having to wait hours to get a test and days or weeks to learn the results. An Associated Press analysis found that the number of tests per day slid 3.6% over the past two weeks to 750,000, with the count falling in 22 states.” [Associated Press, 8/5/20]
In Some States, Long Wait Times And Delayed Results Have Caused Americans To Refrain From Getting Tested.
- “Some of the decline in testing over the past few weeks was expected after backlogged commercial labs urged doctors to concentrate on their highest-risk patients. But some health and government officials are seeing growing public frustration and waning demand.” [Associated Press, 8/5/20]
In Other States, A Persistent Shortage Of Supplies Has Delayed Result Times.
- “With testing chemicals and other equipment in short supply, and a surge in coronavirus cases nationwide leading to skyrocketing demands, many Americans are still having to wait many days for results, effectively rendering those tests useless. Most people who are tested for the virus do not receive results within the 24 to 48 hours recommended by public health experts to effectively stall the virus’s spread and quickly conduct contact tracing.” [New York Times, 8/4/20]
Dr. Carolyn Cannuscio, University Of Pennsylvania Social Epidemiologist: “We Have A Broken Testing System.”
- “‘We have a broken testing system, and that sets us up for failure in contact tracing because people are waiting so long to get their test results that we have missed a critical period for counseling those people to stay home and avoid infecting others,’ Cannuscio said. ‘We’ve also missed a critical period for identifying all the other people they may have come into contact with during their infectious period.’ For those reasons, she said, testing delays can sometimes render contact tracing useless: ‘If any part of the system is broken, then the whole system fails.’” [Business Insider, 8/6/20]
The Drop in Testing Has Resulted in a Misleading Decline in Cases, As Increasing Test Positivity Rates Suggest That the Virus Is Still Spreading Uncontrolled
Florida Paused COVID Testing As Hurricane Isaias Moved Through The State, Resulting In Misleading Case Declines.
- “More than 51,000 new U.S. coronavirus infections were reported nationwide Wednesday, as the daily caseload average continued to trend downward. But the drop has been driven by steep declines in Florida, where Hurricane Isaias shut down dozens of testing sites.” [Washington Post, 8/6/20]
The Florida Testing Sites That Were Closed Were Previously Among The Busiest In The State — While The Sites Were Closed, The State Tested More Than 20,000 Fewer People Than Each Day Of The Previous Week.
- “Florida on Monday reported its lowest number of new coronavirus cases since June 23, with less than 4,800 new positive results, however, the figure is no reason for celebration because it is tied to the lack of testing due to all state-run testing sites closing because of Tropical Storm Isaias…. The sites that closed included the busiest in Orange and Miami-Dade counties. For context, all last week the state reported more than 87,000 people tested per day. On Saturday, the state reported just under 61,000.” [WKMG-TV, 8/3/20]
Dr. Ashish Jha, Director Of The Harvard Global Health Institute: “Where Testing Is Down More Than Cases, The Test Positivity Goes Up…” A “Really Bad Sign.”
- “In other states… the fall in testing is a problem. In a small handful, testing is down but case numbers are up. ‘Those are extremely unusual and very scary in some ways because if you’re testing fewer people and finding more cases, then your percent positive is going way up,’ Jha said. ‘It’s a real problem in the sense that you have large outbreaks and every day you’re missing more and more.’ In a larger number of states, both testing is down and cases are down—but not at the same rate. Where testing is down more than cases, the test positivity goes up, and that is a ‘really bad sign,’ Jha said.” [Newsweek, 8/6/20]
Dr. Amesh Adalja, A Senior Scholar At The Johns Hopkins University Center For Health Security: “It Is Important To Look At The Percent Positivity Of Tests.”
- “’If cases are declining with the number of tests being performed, it is important to look at the percent positivity of tests,’ Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security, told Business Insider. ‘If that statistic is increasing, that tells you that the outbreak is growing and the number of cases declining is a testing artifact.’…A rising positivity rate indicates that testing capacity has fallen short. ‘When you see percent positivity rising, that usually means that not every case is being captured by this system,’ Adalja said in June. ‘All new cases should be something that’s already on the radar of public health officials — and that’s not probably the case where you have percent positivity rising.’ [Business Insider, 8/4/20]
Though Infections Appear To Be Declining, Test Positivity Rates Are Growing — An Indicator That The Virus Is Still Spreading Uncontrolled.
- “[In] places like Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri and Iowa… the percentage of positive tests is high and continuing to climb, an indicator that the virus is still spreading uncontrolled.” [Associated Press, 8/5/20]
As Of August 2, Thirty-Two States Had Increasing Test Positivity Rates.
- “While the number of tests performed has increased, the test positivity rate has also increased. That means a larger percentage of tests performed turn out to be positive. Had the rise in new case numbers just been the result of increased testing, ‘the percent positive line could look flat or like it is decreasing over the time period when cases increased,’ according to Johns Hopkins University. But that’s not what’s happening. As of Sunday, 32 states had higher test positivity rates over the past week compared to the previous week — suggesting ‘increased transmission,’ Johns Hopkins said on its Coronavirus Resource Center website.” [CNN, 8/3/20]
14 States Currently Have Test Positivity Rates Above 10 Percent, While The World Health Organization Recommends Test Positivity Below 5 Percent.
- “The World Health Organization recommends that governments see a 5% or lower positivity rate for at least 14 days — or lock down to get an outbreak under control. At the moment, 14 states, including Arizona, Florida, and Texas, have positivity rates above 10%. Two states — Alabama and Mississippi — have positivity rates above 20%. [Business Insider, 8/4/20]
President Trump’s Dream Come True — Reported Cases Are “Down” As a Result of His Refusal to Implement a National Testing Infrastructure… But Americans Are Still Dying
President Trump Delegated The Issue Of Testing Downward — And By July, As Cases Surged, Trump’s Failure To Centralize Testing Caused Capacity To Falter.
- “The benchmark of 500,000 tests per day was particularly important, as it was the minimum experts had long called for in order to get the pandemic in the US under control. But as the country neared that benchmark, attention to testing seemed to plummet. The Trump administration, which had already delegated testing down to lower levels of government and private actors, especially appeared to lose interest… The consequence is delays in testing results as the demand for tests outmatches the supply. So people can’t get their test results quickly enough to act on a positive report, preventing tests from achieving the exact goal they’re supposed to accomplish.” [Vox, 7/10/20]
Harvard Global Health Institute’s Dr. Ashish Jha: “In Some Ways This Is What The President Has Been Looking For Numbers Are Coming Down.”
- “With fewer tests, it may seem President Donald Trump’s argument that the high level of testing being behind the high case numbers could start to fall apart. [Dr. Ashish] Jha does not think this is the case, however. ‘In some ways this is what the president has been looking for. Numbers are coming down,’ he said. ‘The bottom line is that testing is dropping in the U.S., but probably not enough for the president to stop [using] it. He will use the total amount of tests done. And that will remain high in the U.S. for a long time. They’ll find a way to convince themselves things are great in America even though pretty much everyone knows things are not great in America.’” [Newsweek, 8/6/20]
Over The Last Seven Days, A Person Has Died From Coronavirus Every 80 Seconds In The United States.
- “Over the last seven days, a grim new COVID-19 calculus has emerged: one person died every 80 seconds from the coronavirus in America. And the pace at which those 7,486 people died appears to be accelerating, a new NBC News tally revealed Wednesday. In July, a total of 26,198 deaths were reported, meaning one every 102 seconds. As of Wednesday morning, more than 158,000 people in the U.S. had died of the virus since the start of the pandemic.” [NBC News, 8/6/20]