Faster, cheaper COVID-19 tests in danger of creating blindspot in data collection

Faster, cheaper COVID-19 tests in danger of creating blindspot in data collection More than 100 million COVID-19 tests have been performed in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's COVID Data Tracker. There's no straightforward answer about whether rapid tests are counted, said Molly Polen, senior director of communications and public YahooNews

More than 100 million COVID-19 tests have been performed in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's COVID Data Tracker.

But the true number of tests is unknown because of decentralized accounting and the fact that not all tests were created equally.

"Testing has always been at the heart of how we get out of COVID, because without insights into where infection is spreading, you're flying blind. Our response is heavily based on test results, in terms of which phase of reopenings we're in and whether we have to go into lockdown," said John Brownstein, an epidemiologist at Boston Children's Hospital and ABC News contributor.

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The CDC only includes polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, tests in its count. These tests look for presence of the virus and are usually sent away from a doctor's office and processed in a large, centralized lab.

But increasingly, doctors' offices are offering a new generation of 15-minute rapid test, which might not always be counted. A third type of test, antibody tests, also are excluded, but these tests show only if a person was previously infected -- not whether they're still contagious.

Keeping track of diagnostic testing at a national level is essential not only for accurately counting confirmed COVID-19 cases, but also for guiding our efforts to control the pandemic. Unfortunately, it seems that many states either don't report data from antigen testing to the CDC or are not keeping complete data on it. ...