Florida's positive testing rate may not be accurate
 

The percent of positive covid 19 tests for florida has been over 10% for last two weeks with a high 18% on July 8 and a low of 11% yesterday, July 11.

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There is no doubt we have a lot of new cases here. However, the percent positive rate is an important barometer to judge the trends.

In the last few days people who scour the Florida coronavirus websites have noticed something peculiar.

Yesterday, July 11, 333 Florida labs reported 100% positivity on all their tests, which amounts to 3528 positives reported to the state with zero negatives. Another 31 labs reported 90-99% positive tests for a total of 1767 positives and very few negatives. Thats about 50% of all positives for the day. These results are not plausible when you have a statewide average of 10-15% positivity. These results skew the positive rate upward by several percentage points. Something is wrong with their reporting system if so many labs are not reporting their negative test results.

Hopefully some sharp reporters will get on this and try to find out what is happening.

Partial list:

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Not surprising. The numbers have not made a great deal of sense from the get go. I saw on a Facebook group that a nurse sent a couple of swabs that had never been used to a lab for testing and both came back positive. I realize that's just an anecdotal rumor and proof of nothing, but I also tend to believe it could be true, especially after seeing this data.

The more this goes on the more convinced we do not know for sure what is going on

Or dare I say.........believe :duck:

Steve

I’ve been wondering about this for a while regarding the positive test results......

When a person tests positive, they need to be retested a few more times and must have two consecutive negative test results in order to be considered safe to go back out into the community.

Now my question and concern...... each time that SAME person is tested and gets a positive result, is that considered a “new case” for each time a test results in a positive result?

If that is truly the case, the amount of positive “cases” is certainly NOT accurate.

Hope I made my point clear.

Starting to think that if you ask 10 scientists you might get 11 answers.

Also consider..
 

Also, if the same people are being tested multiple times, hospital workers, drs, politicians..., are all of those tests being counted in the total?

Not sure what to believe.

Independent Fl dashboard link.
Experience

From what I understand the numbers are by individuals so if one tests several times, they are considered as one case. They are not reporting on the number of tests done (which is separate report) but on the number of positive cases (people).

I surely hope this is correct. Thank you.

This is from the the Florida State website:

These counts include the number of people for whom the department received PCR or antigen laboratory results by day. People tested on multiple days will be included for each day a new result was received. A person is only counted once for each day they are tested, regardless of whether multiple specimens are tested or multiple results are received.

So if tested several times on same day = one result
If tested on multiple days = multiple results

Crazy crap!
Steve

Yes, but are we not talking about the daily positive cases? Today Florida 15,300 positive cases according to Worldometer. This is how many people tested positive for Covid today. They may have tested positive yesterday too but why would they go again to be tested today? Maybe they didn’t believe the first test?

If this is true, I will NOT believe any of the numbers that are being reported.
If a person is positive on Monday, positive on Tuesday and positive on Wednesday, that should still be ONE CASE and ONE RESULT. It is ONE PERSON, not multiple people.

The cases are correct for each day (assuming institutions report on time) but the daily totals are not necessarily cumulative.

There is a problem in that 100s of Florida labs are only reporting positive tests, not negative tests. This doesn't mean the total for positive tests is inaccurate, it means the percentage of positive test they show every day on the dashboard is inaccurate. If you don't report negative tests, your percentage of positives will be higher than it really is.

Here's a news report from Martin County about this. I saw a similar report from Alachua county last week.

‘Technical issue’ leads to negative coronavirus test underreporting

‘Technical issue’ leads to negative coronavirus test underreporting

It appears that positive test results are automatically transmitted to the state while negative ones have to be entered manually.