March 22 Update: US COVID-19 Tests per Day #TestAndTrace

by Calculated Risk on 3/22/2020 05:16:00 PM

Tests per day is a key number to track (along with actual cases and, sadly, deaths). But total tests were a key for South Korea slowing the spread of COVID-19. South Korea has been conducting 15,000 tests per day with a 51 million population, so the US needs to test around 100,000 per day.

Note: NYC and LA have stopped testing mild cases due to resource constraints. Hopefully testing will continue to improve, and we can test more people - this is important for test-and-trace.

The US conducted 44,668 tests in the last 24 hours.

Note: About 19% of tests were positive in the most recent report (some are still pending). The high percentage of positives indicates limited testing.

Click on graph for larger image.

This data is from the COVID Tracking Project. Some states could do a better job of reporting the number of tests - so this is probably low.

Testing is improving, but needs to more than double from here (maybe three times this much to be sufficient for test-and-trace).

Test. Test. Test. But protect our healthcare workers first!