TestsCDC Test Counting Error Leaves Epidemiologists “Really Baffled”

Published 25 May 2020

As it tracks the coronavirus’s spread, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is combining tests that detect active infection with those that detect recovery from Covid-19 — a system that muddies the picture of the pandemic but raises the percentage of Americans tested as President Trump boasts about testing. Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Sheila Kaplan and Sarah Mervosh write in the New York Times that now that serology tests, which look for antibodies in the blood of people who have recovered, are more widespread, C.D.C. officials said Friday they would work to separate them from the results of diagnostic tests, which detect active infection. One of the agency’s data tracker websites has been lumping them together.