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Could someone who knows more about this than I point to a site that tells us how many COVID tests are done each day on the Big Island? Civil Defense only reports the absolute numbers of new infections each day but not the number of tests or numbers of people tested (there's a difference). I have a hard time believing that we went from 20 to 30 cases a day to zero and then back to the mid-twenties on 09/30/20. Please forgive my skepticism, but the numbers make little sense to me without knowing how many people are being tested.
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This site has all the info you want, and more. Takes awhile to load, but hey it's the offical state Covid dashboard! https://hawaiicovid19.com/dashboard/
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I have a hard time believing that we went from 20 to 30 cases a day to zero and then back to the mid-twenties on 09/30/20
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Probably had something to do with the weekend and getting the results back on time.
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10-01-2020, 05:25 PM
(This post was last modified: 10-01-2020, 05:27 PM by Carey.)
The Dashboard only has the statewide # of tests, not broken down by county (& I suspect that most of the reported tests are Oahu based) current number (morning 10/1) is 24 hours: 2,049 72 hours: 4,901
DH had a test a Pahoa on the 3rd & it took 8 days (until the 11th) to get the results, as they seem not to do testing on weekends & early this month is would take 3-5 BUSINESS days to get the results, & Labor Day added an extra weekend day....
If you do the math, had he been positive, he would have almost been able to leave isolation before he got the test results!
According to the dashboard the turnaround statewide is better than it was earlier this month, but at an 72 hr cumulative average of under 2,000 tests a day, I do not see that our state, let alone our county, is ready for the visitor testing that will be needed in 2 weeks!!!!
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I do not see that our state, let alone our county, is ready for the visitor testing that will be needed in 2 weeks!!!!
The only way we could make test results available in a timely manner, is if state officials & state workers were required to personally collect the data at the airport, from thousands of incoming passengers every day. Then they’d discover a new-found motivation for faster, more efficient methods of analyzing, compiling, and releasing COVID test results in hours, instead of days.
But they prefer “essential workers” handle the in-person data collection in a timely, efficient manner, then hand it off to isolated air conditioned state office buildings for leisurely review and assessment of a life and death, or at least seriously incapacitating, contagion.
I lived in American Samoa for a winter back in the eighties. All the TV programs at that time were recorded on tape in Honolulu, then flown down on passenger flights. Thursday’s lineup was the previous Thursday’s programming, including the nightly news. For what it was worth we watched news that was 7 days old. The state of Hawaii uses the same concept for their COVID testing system.
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(10-01-2020, 05:25 PM)Carey Wrote: The Dashboard only has the statewide # of tests, not broken down by county (& I suspect that most of the reported tests are Oahu based) current number (morning 10/1) is 24 hours: 2,049 72 hours: 4,901
DH had a test a Pahoa on the 3rd & it took 8 days (until the 11th) to get the results, as they seem not to do testing on weekends & early this month is would take 3-5 BUSINESS days to get the results, & Labor Day added an extra weekend day....
If you do the math, had he been positive, he would have almost been able to leave isolation before he got the test results!
According to the dashboard the turnaround statewide is better than it was earlier this month, but at an 72 hr cumulative average of under 2,000 tests a day, I do not see that our state, let alone our county, is ready for the visitor testing that will be needed in 2 weeks!!!! I thought the testing for visitors was required on the departure end?
Result turn around has got be 3-5 days at the most. I read about the situation in Mexico earlier this summer. They were only testing 10% of people presenting with symptoms, like a lottery or something. People not sick, forget it. Some guy said it took 30 days for his results to come back. Positive. 
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Note that the "visitor quarantine waiver" requires that you get tested (with an approved test) before arrival, such that the availability of tests isn't a State issue. Maui and Kauai want post-arrival testing in addition, it will be interesting to see where those tests are supposed to come from.
I'm hoping someone sues over the unequal treatment: a tourist can pre-clear and avoid quarantine, but a resident can't travel interisland without a 14-day quarantine. Apparently tourists are worth more (but we knew that).
DOH does not publish complete numbers, only cooked summaries. This is by design. They usually claim "because privacy regulations". Surge testing on Oahu was a clever way to lower the positivity by flooding the data with negatives, thereby making it "safe" to reopen tourism, because we have no other choice.
I believe the actual data entry is performed by UH interns, because State workers (and their air-conditioned offices) would be too expensive.
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Can a state DOH allow testing not yet approved by CDC? Japan has a faster and as accurate saliva test now https://apple.news/AJBdnZ1cARq-MwxoMLHCyFA
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Case in point:
https://www.staradvertiser.com/2020/10/0...in-hawaii/
The Health Department has yet to officially count more than a dozen of the latest deaths at the Yukio Okutsu State Veterans Home in Hilo ...
On Saturday, health officials significantly decreased it’s count of active infections, saying, “The Department of Health has been focused on redesigning procedures to maximize effectiveness of COVID-19 case investigation and contact tracing including making a variety of changes to data systems allowing them to be more automated, and to improve timeliness of data entry and validation. Isolation release data completeness was the focus of recent efforts, resulting in a substantial increase in the number of COVID-19 cases currently reported as released from isolation, from 5,397 to 10126.”
How were they reported before the "redesign", if at all?
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Thank you, Carey. I hope the number of tests being done on the Big Island is available somewhere but I've not found that information so far. Without knowing the number of tests, the absolute number of COVID-19 cases is irrelevant. The positivity rate is much more important which I've never seen published for the island nor the R rate (number of people infected per COVID case), although the latter is almost impossible to calculate without decent contact tracing. Even then, it should be broken down into the major population centers on the island.
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