Sharp Drop Seen in COVID Testing As New Cases Plateau

 The amount of COVID-19 testing being done in the United States has fallen by 30 percent in recent weeks, even though testing can curb the spread of coronavirus and spot new outbreaks quickly.

From a high of nearly 14 million tests a week in early January, the pace fell to fewer than 10 million — a level not seen since October — for the week ended Feb. 24, The New York Times reported.

But Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious diseases expert, warned Sunday that Americans shouldn't get complacent because the number of new cases is now leveling off.

"Let's get many, many more people vaccinated," Fauci said on the CBS show, Face the Nation. "And then you could pull back on those types of public health measures. But right now, as we're going down and [then] plateauing, is not the time to declare victory because we're not victorious yet."

As of Monday, 75.2 million Americans have been vaccinated, with nearly 24.8 million people getting their second shot, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As for drops on COVID-19 testing, some areas are reporting even sharper declines: Michigan is testing about half as many people now as it was in November, and Delaware's state-run sites are testing about one-third as many. Los Angeles County's sites, which were running flat out last month, tested just 35 percent of their capacity last week, the Times reported.

Experts suggested that several factors could be fueling the testing slump, the Times reported:

• Fewer exposures: Since new coronavirus infections have fallen sharply, fewer people may be having contacts that would prompt them to seek a test.
• Less travel: The holiday rush is over, reducing the need for testing before or after trips.
• Bad weather: The severe storms and Arctic temperatures that battered much of the country caused many testing sites to close temporarily.
• The vaccine rollout: Some states have shifted their limited resources, and their public messaging, toward vaccination efforts at the expense of testing.
• Pandemic fatigue: Some experts worry the decline may be yet another symptom of public exhaustion with pandemic precautions and safety measures.

All those forces could be at play, Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told the Times.

"My sense is that it's probably that there are fewer options for testing, fewer communications about it, people may be perceiving that it's less necessary — maybe they just don't see the point any more," she said. But, "there's nothing about the current situation that has made testing any less necessary."

Less testing makes it harder to follow the virus's mutations and to get ahead of variants that may be more contagious or deadly, Dr. Rick Pescatore, the chief physician at the Delaware Division of Public Health, told the Times. "We can't identify variants until we first identify positives," he said.

https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2021-03-01/sharp-drop-seen-in-covid-testing-as-new-cases-plateau