Oregon’s testing positivity rate shows promise in fight against COVID-19 | News

PORTLAND, OR (KPTV) – State health officials say Oregon is showing progress in slowing the spread of COVID-19, but some recent national reports have still indicated the state as a hot spot.

FOX 12 asked Ken Stedman, a PSU Biology professor, known to some as the ‘Virus Hunter’, where he thinks the state stands and which data points offer the most compelling evidence.

Stedman said he has no idea where some of the national reports are getting their numbers from, and that by all accounts, it really looks like Oregon is heading in the right direction.

“The main thing here that I always look at is I look at the percentage positive of tests made,” Stedman said.

Stedman said that metric controls for how much testing is being done.

Statewide the rates from Oregon Health Authority, spanning just over the past month, are in the five and six percent ranges, keeping in mind OHA says not all of the data for the most recent week is in yet.

According to OHA, Oregon’s cumulative positive testing rate is 4.5 percent, half the national average of nine percent.

“Yeah sure, I’d like to see it go lower, hopefully it will, but so far, I think we’re doing a really good job,” Stedman said. “What we really want is to get below five and then as much as we can even below that as well.”

And because that percentage is so critical to our knowledge of the virus’s spread, Stedman said what will really be important moving forward is more, cheaper, and faster testing.

“Right now, people who are getting tested are getting tested for a reason, and it’s usually because they’re sick and what we would really like to have is really widespread testing for everybody,” Stedman said. “It would push the percentage way down because you’re testing people who actually aren’t sick and in fact don’t have the virus. We’ll know a lot more and be able to be much better informed in terms of opening schools going back to work all those things that we’d really like to be able to do.”

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