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Re:Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado by ianhawes on Thursday January 06, 2022 @11:18AM (#29825471)
The testing positivity rate is relatively useless at this point. For example, in my State, there is no way to report a positive test from a rapid result. Only PCR tests administered by a medical professional are considered valid for statistical purposes, even though the government is giving out free rapid tests.
Re:Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado by thomaslord on Thursday January 06, 2022 @03:57PM (#29830044)
This is for good reason. Rapid tests are substantially less sensitive and often give false negatives, especially for asymptomatic cases. There are also a lot of rapid "at home" tests out there that have high false positive rates, so even if non-PCR tests were added to the data the only reasonable approach would be to still require them to be administered by a medical professional to make sure the test is correctly administered and that the test itself is relatively high quality.
Re:Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado by ianhawes on Friday January 07, 2022 @01:46PM (#29843033)
The idea that rapid tests are less sensitive and therefore not valuable is summer-2020 thinking and outdated.

Rapid tests are perfectly fine and should be counted by health departments.

Case in point. My family of 4 all tested positive on rapid tests. 3/4 of us had symptoms. None of us received PCR tests because the next available appointments (other than a 6 hour wait at a state run testing center) were a week away.

Thats 4 people not counted. And we were part of an outbreak that included 3 other families that all tested positive via rapid tests.

Re:Omicron at 100% Prevalence, Colorado by parkingrift on Thursday January 06, 2022 @12:15PM (#29826360)
I don't think it's useless. I think it's a pretty good indication that there are many multiples of actual cases for every confirmed case. If covid cases have risen 5,000% in 30 days, but hospitalizations have only risen 100%, that's an extraordinarily positive outcome.