masters Social Sciences & Political Science (Graduated 1990)
Donald Trump often likes to boast about how many COVID-19 tests have been conducted in the United States, but a new report from The Atlantic is calling those testing statistics into serious question.
According to the report, the Centers for Disease Control has been “conflating the results of two different types of coronavirus tests,” which has had the effect of “distorting several important metrics and providing the country with an inaccurate picture of the state of the pandemic.” ‘How Could the CDC Make That Mistake?’
In short, the CDC has been mixing test results from COVID-19 viral tests with COVID-19 antibody tests, which is a fundamental error that could lead to states reopening their economies before they are actually ready to ease up on restrictions.
The widespread use of the practice means that it remains difficult to know exactly how much the country’s ability to test people who are actively sick with COVID-19 has improved, the publication notes.
Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, appeared apoplectic when informed by The Atlantic of the CDC’s error:
“You’ve got to be kidding me, how could the CDC make that mistake? This is a mess. The viral testing is to understand how many people are getting infected, while antibody testing is like looking in the rearview mirror. The two tests are totally different signals. By combining the two types of results, the CDC has made them both “uninterpretable,” he told the newspaper.
Texas, where the rate of new COVID-19 infections has stubbornly refused to fall, is one of the most worrying states (along with Georgia). The Texas Observer first reported last week that the state was lumping its viral and antibody results together. Is Texas Inflating Its COVID-19 Testing Numbers by Including Antibody Tests?
Georgia is in a similar situation. It has also seen its COVID-19 infections plateau amid a surge in testing. Like Texas, it reported more than 20,000 new results on Wednesday, the majority of them negative. But because it is also blending its viral and antibody results together, its true percent-positive rate is impossible to know. (The governor’s office did not return a request for comment.) https://www.macon.com/news/coronavir...242831786.html
These results damage the public’s ability to understand what is happening in any one state. On a national scale, they call the strength of America’s response to the coronavirus into question. The number of tests conducted nationwide each day has more than doubled in the past month, rising from about 147,000 a month ago to more than 413,000 on Wednesday, according to the COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic, which compiles data reported by state and territorial governments. In the past week, the daily number of tests has grown by about 90,000. The COVID Tracking Project
To conclude: The country’s gain in testing has come by expanding antibody tests, not viral tests, so its ability to detect an outbreak is much smaller than it seems. There’s no way to ascertain how much of the recent in testing is from antibody tests until some of the most populous states in the country like Texas and Georgia, show their residents everything in the data…
