Good News, Maybe

Monday's total, reflecting tests through Sunday, came in with 622 new positives. That's only 9 more than would be predicted if the virus was multiplying at a steady pace.

Keep in mind three things.

First, the multiple, if it's stabilizing, is stabilizing around a much higher value than just 2 weeks ago.

Second, we do not know what testing capacity is in Utah over weekend. That should be picked up by the straightforward method for projection that I've been using — unless there were a lot more tests this weekend (because a lot more people were feeling ill) and the capacity was met.

Third, simply counting tests has a problem. Lots of personnel have to be tested repeatedly, and presumably their samples go to the front of the line at the labs. Here's the thing: that could be a relatively more fixed amount (like some percentage of healthcare workers), with the balance made up by regular patients, and it's possible a greater fraction of reduced capacity is used up by required tests over the weekend.

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Update:

Here's a little bit of evidence on that last point. Utah reported results of 6,799 tests today. But they only reported testing 3,886 people. Here's why the differences matter:

For the total number of people tested, one test per person is included by their earliest positive result. If there are no positive tests, their earliest negative result is used.

Parsing that, it means that if someone took their first test it was counted in both persons tested and tests run, and is also in the cases if it came up positive. But if they've been tested before, a positive counts only in cases and tests run, a negative only shows up in tests run, and no entry is made for persons tested since that person was counted upon their first test. 

What that means is that yesterday in Utah, 622 tested positive, 6,177 tested negative, but of those negatives 47% were repeat tests (probably by healthcare professionals). Compare that to the end of last week, where about 12.5K were done a couple of days in a row, and you get a sense that perhaps half the testing capacity was offline yesterday, and perhaps half of what they had (rather than maybe a quarter) was used for repeated tests of healthcare professionals.