As testing spreads, rate of positive coronavirus cases holds steady
Saturday saw the greatest single-day increase in coronavirus cases in North Carolina. From Friday to Sunday, an additional 1,765 cases were reported in the state. But because the availability of testing continues to soar, that is not necessarily bad news.
Over those same three days, nearly 30,000 tests were completed. That means about 5.9% of all tests were positive.
That rate of positive tests falls in line with what the state has seen over the past two weekend. In the first weekend of May, 6.5% of all the tests came back positive. From May 8 through 10, 5.7% of all tests were positive.
While testing is increasing, the rate of positive cases seems to be holding relatively steady, and that percentage of positive tests is one of the main metrics Gov. Roy Cooper is considering in his plan to allow for more businesses to reopen.
Coronavirus testing in NC
The N.C. Department of Health and Human Services started releasing the total number of patients tested, including those conducted by private labs and public health departments, on March 18. This figure only reflects labs that are reporting to local and state health officials. DHHS doesn't publish raw numbers detailing daily negative and positive tests from labs reporting both of these figures - just percentages. So WRAL is calculating the percentage of positive tests here cumulatively, instead of day over day, to avoid any potential skew of daily figures by either a lag in the reported number of positive/negative cases or a surge in positive cases from labs that don't report both positive and negative results. NOTE: On Aug. 12, DHHS announced a major correction to their testing numbers after discovering a discrepancy with their submissions from LabCorp dating back to April 24. The WRAL team is working to update this graphic to account for the changes, so updates have been paused until then.
