— from Washington State Department of Health —
OLYMPIA – The Washington State Department of Health is making changes to the way we process and report testing data statewide, in an effort to account for the true volume of tests being done and to better benchmark our progress. The following changes are set to take effect Tuesday, 8/25:
Total tests – The DOH data dashboard, and the risk assessment dashboard will now report on the total number of tests instead of the total individuals who were tested. This is a change from the old approach, which counted just one test per person, even if someone was tested more than once. With this new change, every test is counted, and the new data will improve our understanding of the testing situation as it now fully reflects the actual testing volume. This change was made to be more in line with other states’ methodologies as well as the CDC.
Percent positive – The percent of total tests that are positive will also shift from being based on the percentage of unique individuals who test positive to the percentage of tests that are positive. While the data will change, and we anticipate the percent positive will decrease somewhat because we are now accounting for total tests, the dashboard visualizations will stay the same.
Daily Testing Rate– We will add this metric on the Risk Assessment dashboard. This additional measure helps us understand the per capita testing levels in the state and by county. The new measure allows easy comparisons of counties and other locations allowing us to better benchmark our progress. It is calculated by dividing the average number of molecular tests performed over the past week by the population in the county or state and then multiplying by 100,000. We will not be including any targets at this time, but that could change. This metric will replace the current, “Individuals tested per new case” on the risk assessment dashboard (which was an additional way of expressing the “percent positive” metric).
Six months into the pandemic and the state “experts” finally have the bright idea to start actually tabulating total number of tests. Meanwhile businesses are being devastated by local “experts” relying on false data to justify keeping things closed. What an outrage.
Given the politicization of the CDC how far can you trust the institution? It has offered up numerous misstatements, often corrected only after significant push back, blundered testing from the outset, and now fails to push for a much higher level of testing, which most every other advanced economy achieves. I am not willing to believe that their metrics or guidelines (e.g., for reopening schools) are any better than what our own DOH can come up. Yes, policies and procedures have shifted but so has our understanding of Covid-19. I trust our local “experts” to look out for us a heck of a lot more than those who threw open the doors to the huge influx of tourists we see everyday.