Week 7's COVID-19 Report

Week 7:

Today's Week 7 Report highlights the effect of increased testing numbers on: Number of Cases and Overall Measured %Positive. All along, Texas's numbers have been kept low due to a shortage in Testing Materials. In order to establish a baseline and detect whether the virus spreading rates are starting to increase again, it is important to maintain high testing levels (and good analytical turnaround). The Table below shows how the number of tests (on a statewide basis) has increased by a factor of 2 over the last month. Along with more tests, there is more system capacity to take specimens from a more representative subset of the population, not just workers on the front line. As a result, the statewide average decreases to some stable value assuming that the number of tests stay constant and that the infection rate does not start going back up again (for example, as a result of relaxing social distancing practices). We will watch this number over the next four weeks to see how it complements other data (New Cases and New Fatalities).