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Friday, April 24, 2020

April 24 Update: US COVID-19 Test Results

by Calculated Risk on 4/24/2020 05:22:00 PM

NOTE: California sometimes clears the backlog of tests, and this shows a spike in testing. We need to look at the trend.

Test-and-trace is a key criterion in starting to reopen the country.   My current guess is test-and-trace will require around 300,000 tests per day at first since the US is far behind the curve.  Some scientists believe we need around 800,000 tests per day.

Note: The Financial Times reports that Germany is doing more than 50,000 tests per day (with about one-fourth of the US population). That would be 200,000 in the US.  I rounded up to 300,000 per day since the US is so behind on testing. But there are recommendations that Germany needs 200,000 tests per day to do test-and-trace.  (800,000 adjusted for population).

This is just test results reported daily.

There were 223,552 test results reported over the last 24 hours.

COVID-19 Tests per Day Click on graph for larger image.

This data is from the COVID Tracking Project.

The percent positive over the last 24 hours was 14% (red line). The US probably needs enough tests to push  the percentage below 5% (probably much lower based on testing in New Zealand).

All experts agree: We need many more tests!  But we appear to be making progress.