by Calculated Risk on 4/03/2020 05:02:00 PM

Germany is conducting 50,000 tests per day, and scientists are advising Germany to increase testing to 200,000 per day.

The population of Germany is 83 million, about one-fourth of the US. To match Germany's current testing level, the US needs 200,000 tests per day, and the US needs four times that many based on the advice of some scientists.

The US testing shortfall continues. We need someone in charge resolving any bottleneck issues - PPE, manpower, swabs, reagents - whatever the issue, someone needs to be fixing it.

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 at first since the US is far behind the curve.

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

Also, I'm no longer including pending tests.  So this is just test results reported daily.

There were 139,613 test results 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 24% (red line).  The US needs enough tests to push  the percentage below 5%.

Test. Test. Test. Protect healthcare workers first!