Covid-19 will end up as a top 10 leading cause of death in 2020, CDC statisticians say

The United States has done about 51.7 million Covid-19 tests and has been performing an average of about 770,000 tests per day recently, according to Admiral Dr. Brett Giroir, the assistant secretary for health for the US Department of Health and Human Services.

Currently there is a national positivity rate of 9.08% over the past seven days, he said during a briefing with reporters on Thursday.

“We’re all very concerned about the outbreaks which are occurring across the country,” Giroir said, adding they are particularly concerned about California, Arizona, Texas and Florida.

But, Giroir said public health measures are starting to make a difference.

“We are making progress,” Giroir said. The positivity rate is starting to level off, he said, and in some cases, starting to drop. The seven-day rolling averages of cases is starting to turn downward, he said. 

“No one is declaring victory about this,” Giroir added.

Giroir said face masks, physical distancing and good hand hygiene is important, especially in the hotspots that are seeing a surge in cases. The hotspots need to have 90% or more of people wearing masks, he said. That, combined with closing bars and indoor dining, is “essentially the equivalent to shutting down the entire economy.” 

The Covid-19 response team in the past two weeks has gone to 19 locations. The government is also sending teams to help with testing at nursing homes and opening up a surge testing site in Miami, Giroir said.

On testing: Giroir said the government wants to reduce test turnaround time as much as possible and pooled testing could help improve the efficiency by 20% or 30% in labs. The government will prioritize certain areas as well. It will be putting point-of-care testing in nursing homes that will improve the turnaround time there and better protect those vulnerable populations.

There are 654 point-of-care testing machines in nursing homes currently. Over the next two to three weeks, the government will send out an additional 1,700.

Giroir also said that his department is working with manufacturers to better understand their production schedules for August. He expects about 51 million tests will be available, half of which will be used for point-of-care testing.

In September, there should be 65 million tests. Giroir said some of the other testing supplies will remain “tight” as long as there is infinite demand.