“How many coronavirus tests have been conducted in the United States? For the first time since February, the federal government has an answer. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now say that 10,847,778 coronavirus tests have been conducted nationwide. These tests have found about 1.4 million positive cases.”
“These figures come from a new CDC website that appeared online last week with little fanfare. It marks an important but much belated development for the nation’s premier public-health agency, which has struggled to manage a pandemic that has killed more than 81,000 Americans and plunged the U.S. economy into a recession. Not since February 29, when the nationwide death toll stood at five, has the CDC published anything close to a comprehensive daily count of tests.”
“For the past 11 weeks, the COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic has been the country’s only reliable source for national testing data. (The tracker compiles the number of tests reported by each U.S. state and territory daily.) While the CDC has provided only occasional and rudimentary tallies of total tests, data from the COVID Tracking Project have been used by Johns Hopkins University, governors and members of Congress, and the White House.”
“With the new CDC site, the federal government is providing regular testing data again, and for the first time ever, it is doing so on a state-by-state level. But an initial analysis of the CDC’s state-level data finds major discrepancies between what many states are reporting and what the federal government is reporting about them…” Read the full article here.
Source: State and Federal Data on COVID-19 Testing Don’t Match Up – By Robinson Meyer and Alexis C. Madrigal, May 17, 2020. The Atlantic.
