LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Whether you live in Kentucky or Indiana, have symptoms or no symptoms of the virus at all, anyone can get tested and officials encourage it.
As some of you all have pointed out, with more testing and no vaccine there will inevitably be more coronavirus cases.
The FOCUS is taking a deeper look at the positivity rate. That phrase refers to the number of cases divided by the total number of tests.
A high positivity rate could indicate a community is only testing the sickest patients and not casting a wide enough net to be able to determine how the virus is spreading. A low positivity rate is one sign a state has enough testing capacity to track the spread.
In May, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended positivity rates should remain at or below five percent for two weeks for a safe reopening.
Let’s check out the status of our states.
Starting with Indiana, this line graph shows the positivity rate over since the first case on March 6.
You’ll notice on the left the line climbs to an all-time high of 16% on April 26.
Keep following the line right and you’ll see the percent of positive patients continue to decline to 11%.
Heading in the right direction the Hoosier state still has some room for improvement – if cases continue to increase at the same rate more testing is needed to track the spread.
Turning to Kentucky, we’re showing this in a bar graph because we just don’t have the same access to data in the Commonwealth – each bar shows the positivity rate for each day starting March 23.
You’ll notice the peak in positivity on May 5 at nearly 10% near the middle.
As testing capacity increased that rate dropped down to about 4% as long as cases don’t increase at a rate higher than the testing rate, that is a sign to be celebrated.
Now, let's check out the trends in new cases.
First, Indiana.
In Indiana it appears the daily new cases, those blue bars rising from the bottom continuing to decline.
You can see that dotted trend line sloping since highs in April and that's a good thing.
Taking a look at Kentucky, you can see that dotted trend line ebbs and flows as it averages the daily news cases.
The latest peak in cases coming in as recent as this past weekend on the far right.
It is important to note that the data is not a real-time reflection as there are reporting delays from the labs but we're committed to watching this closely.
If you have a question or data you want us to dive into, send us an email at focus@whas11.com.
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