The Utah State Health Department is making a change to the way it calculates positive testing for the Coronavirus. Since February 9, they have made a switch from the “people over people” method and gone to the “test vs. test” model. The Health Department feels that now that the state is receiving a higher number of tests, the the new count will help to know what the trend is.

Since last year the department had implemented the “people over people” approach as the best method to use because of the small number of tests that were given. We spoke with Brady Bradford, Director of the Southeastern Utah Health Department (SEUHD), and asked him to explain this method.

“If a person tests negative in their first test and continues to be tested for the next 90 days, the first test is the only one counted, if they continue to test negative”, Bradford explained. “ Once they test positive, that would be a change in status, so they would then be counted in the positive and total test category.”

The “test vs. test” plan is much simpler, you take the total number of positive test and divide it by the number of total tests.

“In the early days of the pandemic there weren’t a lot of tests to go around so “people over people” was a better measure of what we were doing, but now that we have a lot of tests,”test over test” is a better measure, I wouldn’t necessarily say a more accurate measure, but a better way to figure out what the trend is, because with “people over people” generally we were looking at people who already had symptoms”, stated Bradford.

Percent positive has always been one of the numbers that the state looks at before determining if a county can switch to a lower transmission level. The state required a positive test percentage to be below 13.5%, with the change in calculation that number will change as well. Under the “test vs. test” plan that number has to be below 10%.

“Understand that by simply switching the metric most places will automatically move a few percentage points”, said Bradford.

For more information you can go to the SEUHD website at: https://www.seuhealth.com/