Nearly millions of Americans have already been tested for the coronavirus.
Increased testing in the U. S. has led to one of the most consistent capitated testing rates in the world: more than 11,800 tests per million people. Italy, however, tops the list, with a rate almost twice that of the United States.
The United Kingdom and Turkey, on the other hand, have produced around 7,600 and 7,500 per capita, respectively.
In total, all these tests have yielded 2. 5 million coronavirus infections worldwide. At least another 168,500 people have died from COVID-19.
Six weeks ago, the US was woefully behind South Korea’s tests-per-capita rate. On March 8, South Korea’s total number of tests done per million citizens was roughly 700 times the US’s, despite the fact that the two countries announced their first coronavirus cases on the same day.
In the United States, faulty kits and delays in widespread testing rollout have hampered public health authorities’ ability to determine how many Americans have contracted the virus.
In early March, the US had done fewer COVID-19 tests per capita than many other countries with large coronavirus outbreaks — just five tests per million Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The charts above compare the number of diagnostic tests, which determine whether someone has an active COVID-19 infection, across countries. Such tests involve taking samples of mucus and saliva and running a test in a lab to see whether those samples contain the coronavirus’ genomic sequence.
Antibody tests, on the other hand, can help if a user has already had COVID-19 by testing their blood for coronavirus antibodies.
Read more: Tests are underway to find out if you are immune to the coronavirus. Here are the corporations competing to integrate into the American healthcare system.
Without adequate numbers of both test types, it’s challenging for public-health officials to grasp the scope of the outbreak’s spread or determine how deadly it is.
More widespread testing could change the known COVID-19 death rate, a basic calculation that divides the number of reported deaths by the number of confirmed cases. Experts expect that as reported case counts increase, countries’ death rates will drop.
But even with the sharp increase in testing in the US over the past six weeks, chances are many angry Americans are in the official case count.
That’s because many people who likely have mild cases COVID-19 aren’t being tested, and 25% and 50% of people infected with the virus show no symptoms, so probably aren’t included in the total, either.
To fully “remobilize the economy” in the US, a new report from Harvard University experts suggests, the US needs to be testing 20 million people per day by mid-summer. Currently, the US is testing fewer than 200,000 people per day.
Andy Kiersz contributed reporting to this story.
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