Daily US Times: Several experts said on Friday that the Covid-19 testing numbers that have guided much of the United States’ response to the pandemic are likely to be erratic over the next week or so, as fewer people get tested for Covid-19 during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend and testing sites observe shorter hours.
The result could be potential dips in reported Covid-19 infections that offer the illusion that the spread of the virus is easing when, in fact, the numbers say little about where the country stands in fighting the disease. On Friday, the number of Americans who have tested positive passed 13 millio, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
Dr. Leana Wen, a professor at George Washington University and an emergency physician, said: “I just hope that people don’t misinterpret the numbers and think that there wasn’t a major surge as a result of Thanksgiving holiday and party, and then end up making Hanukkah and Christmas and other travel plans.”
A similar pattern unfolds on many weekends. Because some labs, state offices and testing centers are closed on Saturdays and Sundays, corona case numbers often drop each Sunday and Monday, only to peak on Tuesday.
Professor and chief of infectious diseases at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, Dr. Mark Rupp, said the effect of Thanksgiving is likely to be a magnified version of the weekend figures. The Thursday holiday will exacerbate the record-keeping discrepancies over the long weekend, artificially depressing the reported numbers of coronavirus for four or five days before spiking as test results catch up.
According to Johns Hopkins University data, a high of more than 2 million Covid tests a few days before Thanksgiving as people prepared to travel, but that number had dropped to less than 1.2 million on Thanksgiving Day. As the test numbers dropped, as well as positive case numbers, which had dropped by about a third on Friday, could be adjusted as more results are returned.
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