CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (KCRG) – The governor of Minnesota used a slightly misleading comparison to criticize Iowa’s governor for removing most COVID-19 restrictions, including her mask mandate and restrictions on bars and restaurants .
On Friday, Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minnesota) announced his state’s 7-day COVID-19 positivity rate of 3.9% as he announced a easing of restrictions in Minnesota. The easing of the restrictions was mainly on the crowd and dining room inside, but the mask mandate of the state was left in place. Walz’s government said its move was slow and calculated, criticizing Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds’ faster response taken last week.
CLAIM: “I can not imagine that we have a positive rate of 25% as we see in Iowa, and that is that you are going to overwhelm your hospitals,” Walz said. ‘It’s inevitable. It’s just math, it’s math, it’s nothing else. And it can all be alleviated by the situation we are in. ”
ANALYSIS: Our i9 Fact Check looked at the comparison. Walz Government Office said a reporter his data comes from the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 tracker to quote the statistics. As of Monday morning, the website lists Iowa’s positivity rate at 26.19% for the past week while Minnesota stands at 3.18%.
But the numbers are not created equal. Johns Hopkins obtains its data from its partners at the COVID Tracking Project, which in turn obtains its data from the Department of Public Health. But each state reports its data, specifically its test data, differently.
The Minnesota Department of Public Health reports the number of total tests he has performed, which means that if one person takes three tests, it will appear as three tests in the state’s test total. This is the number Johns Hopkins uses to calculate the positivity rate for Minnesota.
However, Iowa initially reported only the number of people, regardless of how many times each person was tested, meaning that if one person tested three times, it only showed up as one test in the state’s score. Iowa has since adapted its website to report the number of tests AND the number of individuals tested. However, Johns Hopkins still uses the individuals tested to measure the positivity rate.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, both methods of calculating a positivity rate are valid and useful. However, the positivity rate that individuals track will move higher than one that follows overall tests, because the denominator (the number of tests used) will be significantly higher while the number of positive cases remains the same.
CLOSURE: It is still difficult to get an apple-to-apple comparison between the positivity figures of Iowa and Minnesota because of other nuances in how each state reports its data. Iowa does not give a 7-day positivity rate based on total tests, but cites its 14-day rate as 5.0%, much closer to the 3.9% Minnesota reported at the end of last week.
The CDC’s website is the closest to an equal comparison – but it only provides ranges for 7-day positivity rates. It lists Minnesota’s rate as 0-5%, while Iowa’s is 6-10%.
Although the positivity rate of Iowa appears to be higher than that of Minnesota, it is not as high as the government offered Walz on Friday. Therefore, this claim gets ‘B’.
Copyright 2021 KCRG. All rights reserved.