GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) — The COVID-19 pandemic has a lot of people throwing out a lot of numbers.
Between case counts, recovery data, negative and positive test numbers, and hospitalization data, it can sometimes be tough to make heads or tails of exactly what the state of the virus is in the country. Prevea Health President and CEO Dr. Ashok Rai says there are two big stats to watch out for.
“You want to look at the percent positive rate so you know what’s going on in your community,” Rai said on Thursday. “And you want to make sure your health systems are able to take care of the patients they’re being delivered.”
The percentage positive rate is the percentage of tests per day that come back positive compared to the total number of tests received.
“If you’re only testing people that you know are positive, obviously the number is going to be really high,” Rai told WTAQ. “That doesn’t really give you a prevalence number, so you want to make sure that you have a really good testing swath, which we were able to do [in Brown County].”
Brown County has conducted some of the most widespread testing in the state of Wisconsin. Earlier this month anyone, regardless of symptoms, was able to get a free COVID-19 test. That ended May 22nd. Brown County’s positive percentage rate has dropped over the past two weeks, and the state’s rate has remained in the 4-5% range on average.
Maintaining a healthy hospital capacity, Rai says, is key to ensuring the worst won’t occur.
“What happened in cities where there were massive outbreaks, health systems were overwhelmed and then the death rate just skyrocketed,” said Rai. “That’s…what happened in New York.”
Northeast Wisconsin’s Hospital Capacity remains strong , with less than 40 COVID-19 patients and over a thousand hospital beds.
