US is not slowing the new Covid-19 cases, it’s only slowing the tests
Currently more than 25% of the global Covid-19 cases are reported in the United States. The daily new cases in the US continued to increase toward the end of July, and it seems like it’s been decreasing in August.
Specifically speaking, on 1st July, 52,397 new cases were confirmed according to Worldometers.info. It peaked on 24th July, 78,446 new cases were confirmed. Since then, it has been in the negative trend at least until 12th August. However if you look at how many tests were implemented in the US, the new cases look in the decreasing trend just because the tests are reduced.
On 24th July, 926,876 tests were performed nationwide according to 1Point3Acres. This was the peak of tests in July and it kept on decreasing in August as the charts below represent. On 12th August, the test number plunged to only 463,291, which is only a half of the peak in July. Because of this reduction in tests, positive rate soared from 8% of July to 12% on 12th August.
Among the top states in total cases, Texas and Florida are drastically decreasing the tests. Especially in Texas, the daily tests dropped by more than 55% from the peak of 24th July. Because of this change, their positive rate has been rising since the end of July and and it marked 24% on 12th August. If you change it from 7-day average to daily, the actual positive rate was 35% on 12th August, and it was 64% on 11th August.
There is still the possibility that there are less people who claim sickness so they can reduce the tests. However, for example, New York is still increasing the tests even though the daily new cases dropped to three-digit numbers. Canada also has been slowing the new cases but they are keeping the tests in the continuous increasing trend. Daily cases can look decreasing by testing less people, but logically thinking, it is only deferring the count and we’ll see the rebound or increase of deaths in time.
