As per the reports, latest Covid-19 surge in the US is being drastically undercounted. It means that hundreds of cases are currently going unreported to the concerned health departments.
Latest COVID-19 Surge in U.S: It was earlier this week when the officials of federal health department warned American citizens that COVID-19 cases are mounting to a high level. In analyzing such cases, estimates are looking like to be an undercount of the true infections.
A White House COVID-19 response coordinator Ashish Jha stated, “And we know that the number of infections is actually substantially higher than that – hard to know exactly how many, but we know that a lot of people are getting diagnosed using home tests.” he said.
As the results are sometimes going against expectations, the Biden administration felt the need for people to undergo 3rd round of free rapid tests. As per Jha, these tests that were recently introduced have seen really impressive demand in the recent past.
In spite of this, a rise in the home testing has seen a downside as well. One reason is that thousands of cases are going unreported to the concerned health departments. As per some experts, such cases may range up to 5 to 10 times higher as compared to the official numbers.
And this is responsible for the latest COVID-19 Surge in the US that are known to have reach more wider population.
“I’ve been a huge fan of home tests for the last two years,” Jha said. “But what that means is we’re clearly undercounting infections.”
What Are the Dangers of Undercounting COVID-19 Surge?
Experts feel that general trends in the coronavirus metrics is crucial as compared to the individual data points. One such issue can be the lacking data which is not letting experts who’s getting the infection.
Such data can be crucial to analyze different cases along with making future policies as well.
“If we are at a point where our telescope is pointed to a completely different part of the sky, we have less of an understanding of what our case numbers mean and what we are missing,” says Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Brown University stated.
“If people are diagnosing themselves at home, or they’re just not getting tested t all, we are missing the opportunity to sequence and see if there is a new variant causing those infections,” Nuzzo says.
Also Read: CDC Says Nearly Half of Americans Need to Wear Masks Indoors
