A key measure used through Gov. Larry Hogan as an indicator of how the state is doing in its fight against the COVID-19 pandemic is scrutiny.
Lawmakers say they perceive better how the Maryland Department of Health calculates the highly reported positivity rate. They should also know why it is so inferior to other sources, such as Johns Hopkins, that they use state-informed figures in their own calculations.
Maryland Acting Health Secretary Jinlene Chan said the state is another technique for reaching the rate, but said officials have used a constant technique since the first cases were reported in Maryland.
“There’s consistency, ” said Del. Shane Pendergrass. “It doesn’t systematically load the amount of evidence on a daily basis, and that would possibly partly explain why Hopkins’ knowledge is different.”
The State Department of Health publishes the positivity rate online, as well as the amount of positive and negative tests and the total amount of tests.
Combining those numbers so that calculations can be independently verified is a frustrating exercise. Often, the number of effects of positive and negative controls does not correspond to the daily number of reported controls
Pendergrass said that neither she nor her husband, a mathematician, would perceive how the Ministry of Health reaches the number she enters daily.
Maryland uses the total number of positive cases reported on a given day and divides it by the total number of checks reported that day, regardless of when the check was administered. Pendergrass said the numbers on the site, whether positive or negative, do not fit the total number of controls.
“Sounds enigmatic, ” Pendergrass.
Chan agreed that the number of positive and negative cases deserves to be equivalent to the total evidence reported, Pendergrass said they are “not.”
“I’m going to go back and do some calculations. Possibly there would also be problems of knowledge reconciliation and I think there is a detail of research, possibly there would be evidence that they are not, I do not know if they are indeterminate or possibly there will be other problems,” Chan said.
The positivity rate, the percentage of others who tested positive for the virus during a time, is one of the many key signs used to track the progress of a county or state in virus control and prevent fitness systems from being overwhelmed.
Senator Clarence Lam, Democrat for Howard and Baltimore counties, asked Chan and the branch to publish the express method and formula used for the rates he publishes.
“There are a lot of discrepancies and questions here,” said Lam, who is also a physician and researcher at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
The CDC recommends a positivity rate of less than 5% for two weeks before states begin applying restrictions.
And while Chan and others point out that no metric is perfect, Hogan and fitness officials depend on positivity rates and promote that number when it goes down. Last week, Hogan himself scored the record numbers.
An increase above 5% may also raise considerations and, if sufficiently raised, may also put Hogan in a politically sensitive position where he may have to re-impose stricter restrictions at a time when there is “pandemic fatigue” and local and national. economies are suffering to regain balance.
With a statewide reopening on pause, those decisions to impose additional restrictions are the duty of the governor and the heads of jurisdictions in counties and cities, whose numbers may be simply worse than those of the state.
On Wednesday, the government reported that the seven-day turnover rate was 3.61%, up from more than 5% on June 24. Last week, the government announced three new low rates. Hopkins reported that the rate was 4.78% on June 24.
Meanwhile, Johns Hopkins reported that the positivity rate for Wednesday was 5.2%. Hopkins also uses an average of seven days, filtering several tests through an individual.
Covidactnow.org, a site observed through several local fitness workers, reported Wednesday that Maryland’s seven-day average is 5.3 percent. This online page presents the express formula that divides the total number of positive control effects over seven days by the total number of positive and negative effects for the same period.
Senate President Bill Ferguson said he used the state as his number one source, but now uses Covidactnow.org. The site draws its knowledge of the state for its own calculations.
Ferguson told Chan that the branch to explain why positivity rates were others on the state’s website.
“The clarity on this factor is, I think, very important as we go along.”
Chan said the lack of consistency in the way the terms are explained and reported may just be an explanation for why other sites, such as Johns Hopkins, Covidactnow.org and Harvard, report other rates, said many sites base their calculations on reported statistics. branch of health.
“One of the things we’d really like is a non-unusual definition that we can use to compare apples to apples. I think there are a number of other sites with other numbers, once again, that doesn’t fool them, but doesn’t necessarily make our, ” concluded Chan. “We have selected a method that is the right and solid maximum for us.”
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