Additional testing isn't the sole, or even primary, cause of COVID-19 spikes in many states
More testing does, in fact, turn up more cases. However, if widespread testing was the entire reason for the rise in cases, you’d expect the share of positive tests to go down, or, at the very least, remain steady. Instead, that figure is rising in a number of states.
“I think it’s a true increase in the number of cases. It’s not just attributable to testing. If it was just due to the testing, we wouldn’t see the rates that we see. And the rates are indicative of the relaxation,” says Murray Côté, an associate professor of health policy and management at Texas A&M.
In Arizona, there are two major reasons the increase in daily new cases shouldn’t be attributed to increased testing, says Dr. Joe Gerald, the director of public health policy and management at the University of Arizona Mel & Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health. For one, the uptick appears to have started 10 to 14 days after the end of the state’s stay-at-home order—and 14 days is the timeframe in which health experts agree that COVID-19 symptoms typically appear.
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