China News Service, August 14 According to foreign media reports, on the 13th, Texas officials launched an investigation to find out why the number of new crown hospitalizations across the state and other indicators indicate that the spread of the virus is slowing. However, the state’s new coronavirus test positive rate has seen a record surge.
According to reports, Governor Greg Albert said on the 13th that a special "data team" has been formed to check the analysis and calculations of the state health department. However, a few hours after announcing the investigation, the health department announced a new positive rate for the new crown, which was significantly lower than the data released in more than a week.
Data map: On June 24th, local time, Houston, USA, a member unit of the Texas Medical Center-Baylor St. Luke Medical Center was stuck with a colorful letter board "Heroes work here". Photo by China News Agency reporter Zeng Jingning
Prior to that on the 11th, the positive rate of the new coronavirus in Texas jumped to a record 24.5%. Later on the 13th local time, the Ministry of Health announced on its website that as of the 12th, this figure had fallen to 16.08%, but no other explanation or details were provided.
According to the report, Albert pointed out that a factor in the increase in the diagnosis rate may be that fewer and fewer Texans are seeking virus testing. Albert said: "In the past few weeks, we have seen a decrease in the number of people being tested." He said that in July, public health officials conducted several "peak detection operations" targeting epidemic hotspots and increased testing. total. And these large backlogs of test results, and the continuously shrinking denominator, may lead to an increase in the positive rate.
According to the governor, as the Houston area begins a large-scale testing operation, the number of people tested will increase in the next week or so. The goal of this testing operation is to test another 50,000 people within 10 days.
In Houston, the fourth largest city in the United States, the spread of the virus seems to have slowed. According to a report by the Texas Medical Center, as of the 12th, the effective transmission rate was below 1 for the third consecutive day, and the growth rate of newly confirmed cases was 22% lower than last week. A transmission rate below 1 indicates that the transmission rate is declining.
The medical center said that Houston and the surrounding 8 counties found 1558 new confirmed cases on the 12th, which is a drop from the nearly 2000 single-day new confirmed cases every day last week. At the same time, the positive detection rate was 10.2%, a drop of nearly half from 20.3% last month.
According to the report, Houston’s data has been closely watched by public health authorities and politicians because its hospital system was one of the first signs of stress when the epidemic broke out. However, the most serious crisis has now shifted to borders and coastal areas, where medical infrastructure and personnel are even more scarce.