In the recent past, I have been publishing COVID-19 metrics showing how Virginia hospitals had plenty of spare capacity (beds, ICUs and ventilators) to handle an increase in patients stricken by the virus. Now that Governor Ralph Northam has let his no-elective-procedures edict expire, the issue is moot. Unless we observe an unexpected surge in hospitalizations, I don’t see any point in highlighting these metrics now.
Of greater relevance are the metrics that Northam is watching because they are the ones upon which he will base his decisions to relax other emergency shutdown measures. One of those is the number of COVID-19 tests conducted and reported to the Virginia Department of Health.
Virginia public health authorities were slow off the mark in developing in-house testing capacity and aggregating test results from private labs. The Governor’s work group is working to remedy that deficiency, however, and the numbers of tests reported is climbing. Discounting for swings attributable to weekend reporting delays and a one-day spike when VDH changed its methodology, the state appears to be 50% to 60% of its way toward Northam’s goal of a minimum of 10,000 tests daily.
Another metric is the percentage of tests that turn out positive, on the logic that a lower percentage of people testing positive for COVID-19 reflects a lower incidence of the virus in the population. I have criticized the “confirmed cases” metric and the “confirmed cases as a percentage of tests” metric on the grounds that they reflect protocols, priorities, and sampling biases far more than the incidence of the virus. Be that as it may, Northam has selected the metric, and here’s what it looks like:
As we can see, that metric is highly volatile. I have shown the trend for the past 30 days, but Northam wants to see a declining trend over two weeks. In that case, the percentage of positive tests seems to be on a markedly downward slope.
I’m all in favor of judiciously rolling back Northam’s emergency shutdown measures, but I’d like to see actions based upon sound reasoning. And I just don’t see this metric as being a useful indicator of whether the disease spread is spreading or contracting. Whatever, to paraphrase President George W. Bush’s immortal words, the Governor is the decider.
For those of you who pine for hospitalization data, I include John Butcher’s latest update here:
The number of hospitalizations plateaued a while back: a stable COVID-19 patient count in hospitals along with slightly declining utilization of ICUs and ventilators.
— JAB
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