Gov. Andrew Cuomo: New York just boosted its total number of coronavirus tests by almost 50% in the last day. Here's how the state is doing compared to other countries.
- New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo held a press conference on Friday addressing the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.
- He announced that the state had processed 10,000 new coronavirus tests overnight, claiming that the state is now testing at a higher per-capita rate than South Korea or China.
- While the 10,000 test results in the last day does represent a very impressive rate, the state has a long way to go to catch up to the overall testing levels of many hard-hit countries.
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Gov. Andrew Cuomo held a press conference on Friday addressing the ongoing coronavirus outbreak in New York State and elsewhere.
Cuomo announced 7,845 confirmed cases in the state, according to The New York Times, and that 10,000 new coronavirus tests were processed overnight - bringing the state's total to 32,427 tests. This suggests the state has, in the last 24 hours, completed roughly one-third of all its tests for COVID-19, or infections caused by the novel coronavirus, since the emergence of the now-pandemic disease nearly 12 weeks ago.
According to The Times, Cuomo also claimed that the state was now testing more people per capita than China or South Korea. Although up-to-date testing figures from China are hard to come by, South Korea tested an additional 9,640 people between March 19 and March 20, according to the Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
That South Korea figure is pretty close to the 10,000 tests done in NYS overnight, and since South Korea has about two-and-a-half times the population of New York, Cuomo's claim that the state is currently testing at a higher per-capita rate than that country is reasonably accurate.
However, New York, along with the United States as a whole, has a lot of catching up to do.
Here's the total number of tests done since the beginning of the outbreak in New York, the United States, and a handful of other countries, along with the population-adjusted number:
While most of the countries on the list regularly update the total number of tests performed on their various health ministry websites, data for the entirety of China is harder to come by. (The results above are for the Guangdong region of China come from a WHO report published at the end of February on conditions in China.)
New York has been ramping up testing pretty dramatically over the last weeks, and has tested nearly five times the share of its population compared to the US as a whole. However, there is still a long way to go to match or exceed overall per-capita testing rates in hard-hit countries like China, Italy, and South Korea.
Testing is an important part of any state or country's response to the outbreak. Being able to track the extent and severity of the disease makes it possible to develop responses and keep as many people safe as possible.
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