As more and more Americans get vaccinated against COVID-19, less people are getting tested, making it harder for states to know how widely the virus is spreading.
Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr, an epidemiologist at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, says testing is still critical in reducing infections nationwide, but the shift in focus to vaccinations is causing people the believe they don’t need to be tested.
Health experts at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention note that they are still learning how vaccine will affect the spread of COVID-19 and all that is really known is that the vaccines are effective in protecting people from getting sick.
Dr. El-Sadr says robust testing is still critical until vaccination becomes more common and accepted.
“Without testing, we are in the dark in terms of measuring how far we are going, measuring number of cases, measuring the impact of the vaccine,” she explains.
The number of daily tests in the United States has declined 35% since mid-January.
However, experts believe that if states continue to expand the number of testing centers and as pharmacies begin to offer at-home tests, the numbers will go up once again.
States, such as New York, continue to use testing to track the number of COVID-19 cases in certain populations, and also use them to track the number of COVID-19 variants.
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