by Calculated Risk on 3/30/2020 05:09:00 PM

Test-and-trace is a key criteria in starting to reopen the country.   My current guess is test-and-trace will require around 300,000 tests per day.

When I first started posting this data (thanks to the COVID Tracking Project), testing was so low, that just tracking the number of tests made sense.

The percentage positive is also critical. Unfortunately some states and labs don't report all negative tests, although that is supposed to change soon.

The real key is to have enough tests that the US can test all people with symptoms (even mild), all close contacts of those testing positive (aka Test-and-Trace), healthcare workers and first responders fairly regularly (upon request), staff at retirement communities and nursing homes, and those people that regularly visit those facilities (it is a burden on older people not see their families).

Notes: Data for the previous couple of days is updated and revised, so graphs might change.

Also, I include all tests in the total including pending.

The percent positive excludes the pending tests.

There were 113,336 tests reported over the last 24 hours.

Click on graph for larger image.

This data is from the COVID Tracking Project.

The percent positive over the last 24 hours was 19%.

Testing must continue to be expanded until the percent positive declines to 5% or lower.   This is based on results from South Korea.

Test. Test. Test. Protect healthcare workers first!