Increased testing doesn’t account for spike in US coronavirus cases, WHO official says
The number of coronavirus cases in the United States has increased exponentially in some places as states roll back the restrictions that shuttered businesses and encouraged people to stay home.
And according to one top health official, a surge in testing isn’t entirely to blame.
Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the World Health Organization’s Health Emergencies Program, said Monday during a media briefing that increased testing in the U.S. does not account for the drastic uptick in COVID-19 cases.
“What is clear is that the increase (in cases) is not entirely explained through just increased testing,” he said. “There is some evidence of increasing hospitalizations. This was always a possibility when restrictions are lifted.”
Ryan, a former trauma surgeon link addedand infectious disease expert, then pointed to the potential need for local officials — not at the state or national level — to reinstate restrictions to help curb the spread.
“The issue is not the rising numbers, per se, the issue is what is to be done to bring those numbers back, and what combination of measures can be used in order to do that,” he said.
Ryan’s comments come on the heels of President Donald Trump suggesting Monday that the U.S. was testing too much, McClatchy News reported. The statement was in response to his earlier remarks that the country should “slow down” its testing.
“We’ve done too good of a job,” Trump said Monday after Scripps reporter Joe St. George asked whether he requested a slowdown in coronavirus testing.
The U.S. just reached completing 500,000 new coronavirus tests per day — a figure some health experts have said was the “bare minimum” required, Vox reported, citing the COVID Tracking Project.
According to the project, the total daily tests in states across the country hovered between 400,000 and nearly 595,000 since June 1. They were nearly half that at the end of April and beginning of May.
There were more than 2.3 million positive coronavirus cases in the U.S. as of Monday afternoon, and at least 120,000 people have died, according to Johns Hopkins.
The number of positive test results has spiked in states such as Arizona, Florida, South Carolina, Texas and Utah, The Hill reported. Hospitalizations in Arizona, Arkansas, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Wyoming have followed a similar trajectory.
States in the Southeast also saw a surge in COVID-19 cases among young people, McClatchy News reported.
Young people make up the highest number of new cases in Florida and Louisiana, and South Carolina’s largest rise in infections was among people under 30 years old, according to McClatchy.
Health officials have pointed in part to “lax social distancing” as a reason for the jump — a concern Ryan echoed Monday during the WHO’s media briefing.
“Many countries have experienced the clusters of disease or upticks in the aftermath of reducing stay at home orders or allowing population mobility to happen,” he said. “What we have said — and I believe the scientists in the U.S. are saying this over and over — is that maintaining vigilance around physical distance, personal hygiene, the wearing of masks according to the national guidelines ... this is what needs to continue.”
This story was originally published June 22, 2020 at 5:28 PM with the headline "Increased testing doesn’t account for spike in US coronavirus cases, WHO official says."
