Read on Twitter
Bonus thread today! I want to speak to a critical issue – college testing and how it impacts official % positivity. Most students have been sent home for the semester and they’re no longer subject to random testing. That’s causing a jump in % positivity
This does not represent the pandemic worsening, it reflects a change in how we test. I’m going to use Ohio State as an example. First though, this chart shows official % positivity. One can see it inflecting higher starting around 11/26
Ohio State has a dashboard that displays all of their case data. It is publicly available by going here and you can download their data in Excel form
https://dataviz.rae.osu.edu/t/public/views/COVID-19Dashboard2020_08_25/COVID-19Dashboard?%3Aiid=1&%3AisGuestRedirectFromVizportal=y&%3Aembed=y
https://dataviz.rae.osu.edu/t/public/views/COVID-19Dashboard2020_08_25/COVID-19Dashboard?%3Aiid=1&%3AisGuestRedirectFromVizportal=y&%3Aembed=y
From 11/9 to 11/24, OSU accounted for 5.2% of total tests in the state of Ohio. After that, OSU shut down testing for Thanksgiving break and sent home most students to go virtual for the remainder of the semester. From 11/25 to 12/2, OSU accounted for just 0.9% of Ohio’s tests
Why does that matter? Ohio State was doing randomized testing and as a result their % positivity was very low. How low? Try 2.66% from 11/9 to 11/25. In contrast, the state of Ohio as a whole had positivity of 13.8% during that time frame.
The end result? From 11/9 to 11/24, OSU reduced Ohio’s percentage positive by 0.6% overall. On some days OSU reduced positivity by as much as 1.2%. This negative influence on Ohio’s positivity is now significantly lower. From 11/25 to 12/2, OSU only reduced positivity by 0.1%
Ohio’s cumulative % positive from 11/25 to 12/2 was 15.2%. If OSU had its average impact from 11/9 to 11/24, it would have been 14.7%. And that’s just one school…
Miami tested 37K from August 17 & onward at 6.6% positivity…
https://miamioh.edu/healthy-together/status-updates/dashboard/
https://miamioh.edu/healthy-together/status-updates/dashboard/
From 8/20 to 11/27, Bowling Green performed 6,463 tests searching for asymptomatics, yielding just 0.7% positivity… https://www.bgsu.edu/covid19.html
Since 9/21, OU tested 10,301 searching for asymptomatics, yielding 2.0% positivity https://public.tableau.com/profile/ohioiea#!/vizhome/OHIOCOVID-19Dashboard/AsymptomaticTesting_1
This is critical context when considering our % positivity and speaks to why it is going up while our currently hospitalized has gone down four out of the last five days. It reflects a change in how we test, not a worsening pandemic
The % positive is one of the metrics @govmikedewine will look at when considering public health orders. As such, it is critical that it is viewed by the public & government in the right context. If you feel this information is helpful, please re-tweet! https://twitter.com/chgodby/status/1335720761093476352?s=20
