4 ms·
Percentage positive is disconnected from testing increases. It shows if you're catching more cases because you're testing more or if the true rate of infection
by Scipio_Afri 6y ago
Percentage positive is disconnected from testing increases. It shows if you're catching more cases because you're testing more or if the true rate of infection is actually the same or decreasing. It still has sample bias - which depends on the availability and criteria for testing someone.
As soon as hospitals start allowing elective surgeries again hospitalizations become less of an indicator and you have to go by "suspected" or "confirmed tested" covid hospitalizations.
- dkfjdkfjda 6y agoI don't think it's entirely disconnected. It'd be disconnected if you had samples that are comparable (ideally random, representative of the population), but that's not the case in most countries. When you start with very limited testing capacity, you prioritize "important" groups of people that are often at higher risk of infection (healthcare workers, older people, ...) so you can expect higher percentage of people to test positive. But as you increase the capacity / number of tests, the sample structure will change - people with lower risk of infection will get tested, so it's natural to expect the percentage positive to decrease.