New COVID-19 Spikes Not Due To a Surge in Testing

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

The media says COVID-19 testing rates are much higher than they were initially, and that this fact might help explain some of the increase in diagnosed cases. Out President says we should SLOW TESTING DOWN because we are finding new cases. He says this trying to imply to his base that testing causes cases when, of course, more cases make him look bad. Scientists have been saying for some time that by this point we should have between 5 and 10 million tests per day to safely open.

In other words, everyone should be tested monthly or every two weeks for the virus. Our 7-day average of daily COVID-19 tests as of June 27th is 541,283 tests. And if you look at the bar chart and trend line below, THERE IS NO SURGE!

What we see from the data is the gradual rise in testing numbers over time. If there was a surge at any time, it happened back in mid-May and then it faded away. So any talk about how the increased test is responsible for the current surge in confirmed infections is just not accurate. 

 

Data source: Worldometer.info. The graph is by Brian T. Lynch. It was last updated on July 6, 2020.

And our testing numbers are not good when compared with other countries. We are 26th in the world for tests per million. We are orders of magnitude away from that goal, and our situation compared to the rest of the world is obvious. The graphic below shows how we are doing compared with the EU. The biggest problem we have is politicizing of wearing surgical masks in public.

And here below is the seven-day moving average of daily testing numbers beginning on May 2, 2020.