Utah finished ninth among the 50 states over the weekend for its high percentage of tests that are positive.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Kylie Archuleta and Joshua Brimhall will perform COVID-19 tests at the Farmington Health Center of the University of Utah Health on Friday, July 31, 2020.
One of the most viewed – and often most worrying – data points of the COVID-19 pandemic is the positive percentage of the test.
This is a simple measure: how many of the COVID-19 tests processed are positive?
The Utah Department of Health, for example, reported Monday that the seven-day moving average for test positivity was 30.8%. (Health officials use seven-day averages for many metrics because they reveal broad trends rather than the larger ups and downs of daily reports, highlighting factors such as weekends and holidays.)
But if you took the number of positive cases during the previous seven days – 19 043 – and divided by the number of total tests processed, which was 54 219 for the seven days ending on Monday, you would get a figure of 35.1%.
David Nierenberg, a pilot in Salt Lake City, found similar abnormalities when he examined UDOH numbers last week.
“The last few days of reporting on positive percentages have been down,” Nierenberg wrote to The Salt Lake Tribune last week. “Would you please put the actual number tested last week in the next article to correct the record?”
Why then is the official positivity rate of the state different and lower? With the daily figures released by UDOH, ‘there is no negative outcome for you,’ explained Tom Hudachko, a spokesman for the department.
Positive test results are reported faster than negative results, so UDOH takes a little delay time, usually about five days, so that the negative results can catch up, Hudachko said. Without that delay, the positivity rate would be artificially high, he said.
A positivity rate of around 30% is alarmingly high as it is. Public health experts say such a high positivity rate is an indication that there are many people who have the virus and are not being tested.
Dr. Todd Vento, a physician for infectious diseases at Intermountain Healthcare, noted Monday that Utah ranked ninth among the 50 states for its positivity rate over the weekend.
“We still have quite a few positive broadcasts,” Vento said Monday in an online briefing.
“Testing is important, but it’s not how you get out of a pandemic. You are not testing your way out of a pandemic, ”Vento warned. ‘You prevent and prevent diseases from spreading. This is how you get yourself out of a pandemic. ”
Vento said government officials fell into this trap early on that we just need to test more to show that we are more negative [tests]. This is really the wrong approach. The right approach is that we need to test more to find out what the truth is. ”
UDOH has a target of 5% test positivity, Hudachko said. The low rate, Vento said, will show excellent control over the spread of the virus. “We were not 5% for months and months, and also not many states in the United States,” Vento said.
The way to lower the positivity rate of the test, Vento said, is to get people vaccinated and, until that happens, keep doing what health experts have been saying for months: ‘You have to wear a mask, 100% of the time if you are out in public and in contact with others. You must stop gathering, and [you have to be] keep your physical distance. ”
Vento added: ‘The message is not going to change because the calendar year has changed. The message is the same. ”