Few figures tell you anything useful about how the coronavirus has spread through the U.S. Here’s one that does.

How many people have the coronavirus in the United States? More than two months into the country’s outbreak, this remains the most important question for its people, schools, hospitals, and businesses. It is also still among the hardest to answer. At least 630,000 people nationwide now have test-confirmed cases of COVID-19, according to The Atlantic’s COVID Tracking Project, a state-by-state tally conducted by more than 100 volunteers and experts. But an overwhelming body of evidence shows that this is an undercount.


Whenever U.S. cities have tested a subset of the general population, such as homeless people or pregnant women, they have found at least some infected people who aren’t showing symptoms. And, as ProPublica first reported, there has been a spike in the number of Americans dying at home across the country. Those people may die of COVID-19 without ever entering the medical system, meaning that they never get tested.

There is clearly some group of Americans who have the coronavirus but who don’t show up in official figures. Now, using a statistic that has just become reliable, we can estimate the size of that group—and peek at the rest of the iceberg.

According to the Tracking Project’s figures, nearly one in five people who get tested for the coronavirus in the United States is found to have it. In other words, the country has what is called a “test-positivity rate” of nearly 20 percent.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/04/us-coronavirus-outbreak-out-control-test-positivity-rate/610132/

The deaths of three more Arkansans from covid-19 were announced by state officials Monday as the number of people testing positive for the coronavirus hit a new one-day high in the state.

At his daily news conference on the pandemic, Gov. Asa Hutchinson announced the creation of an advisory panel, made up of physicians and led by the state Department of Health secretary, that will study how to eventually lift restrictions on social interaction without causing a second wave of infection.

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From Sunday afternoon to Monday afternoon, 130 Arkansans tested positive for the virus, raising the state total to 1,410 cases and setting a high for new cases in the state in a 24-hour period. The state's death toll rose to 30.

But by Monday evening, the state's number of cases rose to 1,475.

https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2020/apr/14/positive-tests-hit-new-high-in-state-20/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=morning-4-14-20-nonsubscribers&utm_content=morning-4-14-20-nonsubscribers+CID_4cdfd10a44ffc6e5497527a4408f1cc4&utm_source=Email%20Marketing%20Platform&utm_term=READ%20MORE