These 2 States Are "Missing a Lot of Cases," Harvard Doctor Warns
Since the onset of the COVID-19 outbreak, there have been more than 5.4 million reported coronavirus cases in the United States. However, that's only what has been reported. Underreporting and undertesting has been a major concern throughout the course of the pandemic, and it may only be getting worse. In fact, one doctor is growing concerned about two hard-hit states that have pulled back on testing and seem to be missing a lot of coronavirus cases: Florida and Texas.
"It is really concerning because testing is sort of the first step to figuring out how much disease there is in a community," Ashish Jha, MD, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, said in an interview with NPR. "If you can't test people, you don't really know how much disease there is [or] how much disease you're missing. And right now I'm getting worried that we're missing a lot of cases in Texas and Florida and other states."
According to the John Hopkins University, Florida's testing rate is decreasing, with the state only conducting about 1.6 tests per 1,000 residents. And Texas is only doing 2.0 tests per 1,000. In comparison, New York is doing about 4.1 tests per 1,000 people and Massachusetts is conducting roughly 2.7 tests per every 1,000 individuals. What's even more surprising is that Florida and Texas have both reporterd more than 40,000 new coronavirus cases in the last seven days. New York and Massachusetts, on the other hand, both have seen less than 4,000 in that same time period, The New York Times reports.
Jha says there is an entire set of factors that are driving this drop in testing for these two states—none of them suggesting that's it's because fewer people are getting sick.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/these-2-states-are-missing-a-lot-of-cases-harvard-doctor-warns/ar-BB184vkM?li=BBnba9O&ocid=DELLDHP
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