Even as California’s confirmed COVID-19 cases swelled beyond 10,000 on Thursday, nearly six times as many tests still await processing.
“Those labs are overwhelmed by the demand,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said at a Thursday press briefing, where he announced that nearly 60,000 tests have yet to be completed. “The backlogs are not necessarily getting better in real time.”
What’s the real number of Californians who are infected? The question comes at a crucial time when families are trying to decide who needs isolation and treatment. It’s hard to manage what you can’t measure.
If California’s true infection rate reflects what’s been seen in the NBA – where Kevin Durant, Rudy Gobert, and at least eight of 75, or 13%, contract players have tested positive – we’d see 5.2 million California cases.
If we’re instead more like Italy, with a 0.12% infection rate, we’d have 48,000 cases. California’s current infection rate – 10,000 for 40 million residents – puts us closer to 0.025%.
But that’s just a guess. Because of limited testing, we have no way of knowing the true number of cases.
The state’s health officials have not yet received a compilation of total test results – both positives and negatives – from the academic institutions, state labs, commercial labs and private sector point-of-care labs that do testing, said Newsom.
And even now, weeks into the epidemic, testing is still largely done on people with pronounced symptoms