Falling Coronavirus Testing Numbers Obscures the Reality of the U.S. Pandemic

July was devastating in the U.S. After the country had appeared to flatten the curve in late spring, daily new cases of COVID-19 skyrocketed as the season turned, peaking at 20.5 per 100,000 people on July 18, according to data gathered by Johns Hopkins University (JHU). After some hemming and hawing, many local officials of states seeing resurgences reinstated some of the restrictions, meant to limit the spread of the virus, which had previously been lifted. On the face of it, these decisions seemed to have paid off: Though the U.S. recently passed 5 million total confirmed cases, it took longer (17 days) to go from 4 million to 5 million than it did (15 days) to go from 3 million to 4 million. And in the past two weeks, the per-capita daily case rate in the U.S. has fallen by four—equal to a drop of about 13,100 new daily cases.

The reality, however, might not be so rosy. That’s because in that same time frame, testing for COVID-19 in the U.S. has also fallen at practically the same rate. A little over two weeks ago, about 820,000 new tests were being administered per day, according to the COVID Tracking Project. By Aug. 12, that had dropped to about 710,000:

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Source: TIME: Health - August 12, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Elijah Wolfson Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Source Type: news