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Whether a country or region is doing enough testing for the coronavirus should be assessed based on the positivity rate and not on the number of tests. The positivity rate for Tokyo is now over 6%, so we should be doing a bit more testing to bring the number down.

6 Comments

Fumie Sakamoto, infection control manager at the St Luke's International Hospital in Tokyo.

© Thomson Reuters

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6 Comments
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But... some people are currently being refused tests in Tokyo. Hospitals are actually turning them away. I now have 2 friends who are 99% percent sure they have covid but were refused testing. They were told to just stay home and avoid infecting people.

2 ( +3 / -1 )

um that's not how numbers work? If there are more cases to be found they will be found with more tests. If you don't have a benchmark yet then they can't go down because you won't know what the current community threshold is.

Also you want to compare this over time with daily then 3/ 7/ 14/ 28 day rolling averages given the virus incubation period.

You can't know what you can't know, Rumsfeld's unknown unknowns

Also you make this data public and you raise the testing rate to international standards

2 ( +2 / -0 )

Ridiculous! If you go by this thinking, then start testing a lot of people without symptoms. That will bring the number down to the stats he wants.

0 ( +2 / -2 )

Duo to technicality and testing policy, the Covid numbers and rates do vary. It's not at all surprising that some people from a country/region who test negative turn out to be positive in another country (or vice versa. There was actually the case of people testing positive at arrival airport floors in Japan despite their negative certificates issued prior to departure).

Considering higher human mobility crossing borders, I'd recommend that the testing process be more standardized on global agreement. It should also be accountable. At what level (Ct) to take may remain to be discussed.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

Here's me thinking that vaccinations may get us out of this mess when the real answer is to test more healthy people to bring the percentage of positive results down.

Truly ridiculous.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

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