by Calculated Risk on 5/14/2020 05:20:00 PM

Virginia was including antibody testing with PCR (diagnostic) testing. For test and trace, PCR testing is the key. From Virginia Department of Health: Virginia Department of Health Releases Disaggregated Testing Data; No Differences in Trends

The Virginia Department of Health today released testing data broken out by PCR (diagnostic) and antibody (serology) tests. Antibody tests make up less than nine percent of overall tests. When these tests are removed from total results, there is minimal change in the percent positive of tests and no difference in overall trends.

It is possible that other states are also including antibody tests in their daily test reports. If so, it would be helpful if they separated the tests. (Thanks to all the states for the hard work)

The US might be able to test 400,000 to 600,000 people per day sometime in May according to Dr. Fauci - and that might be enough for test and trace.

However, the US might need more than 900,000 tests per day according to Dr. Jha of Harvard's Global Health Institute.

There were 366,944 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 6.9% (red line). The US probably needs enough tests to keep  the percentage positive well below 5%. (probably much lower based on testing in New Zealand).