Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - Worldwide, testing for COVID-19 has decreased significantly even though there is an increase in reported cases. Most people are testing at home or not at all and not all, making it difficult for scientists and medical professionals to gauge the count of confirmed cases and aid in discovery of possible subvariants.
"With the advent of home testing, a lot of people are testing at home and they're positive and those cases aren't necessarily reported," said Dr. Thomas Russo, Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases in the Department of Medicine, Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo, "The actual number of reported cases is certainly an underestimate of the true community burden of disease we're experiencing at this time."
According to a study done by Johns Hopkins University, the number of U.S. daily reported cases is up 40% over the last two weeks, with the average number of daily cases reaching 73,633. It is estimated 13% of cases are being reported according to a study done at the University of Washington. This statistic would suggest that there are approximately 500,000 cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. alone.
How many people are taking at home tests versus no testing at all? Like analyzing the total number of cases, this is a hard question to decipher, "It's difficult to gauge that and people have been using home tests for the prior winter surge with Omicron BA.1. Whether it's increased over time is difficult to say. Testing has become a bit more available," said Dr. Russo.
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Dr. Russo does note that there have been a decrease in COVID hospitalizations, "We do have a number that's independent of testing. So, albeit we may be underestimating the total number of cases, hospitalizations usually are testing independent because if someone gets sick, they're gonna go to hospital. What's been nice about this spring wave is although we have had a large number of cases, there's been a relatively relative decoupling of cases with the hospitalizations compared to earlier ways. We've had fewer hospitalizations."
Dr. Russo believes that we are in the midst of the highly contagious subvariants, "I do think it's likely that we're sort of at the forefront of the wave of cases now that's slowly spreading across the country. To the BA.2 and some of its subvariants BA.2.12 and BA 2.12.1. They're extraordinarily infectious variants. They're more infectious than the earlier BA. 1 Omicron variants. That's what's been responsible for our spring wave here with a large number of cases and it's slowly spreading across the country."
Dr. Russo recommends that if you have strong COVID symptoms such a respiratory tract infection, home tests are not the optimal and you should take a PCR test.
For the full interview, see the link below: