- Officials say that the number of COVID-19 tests being administered in the United States has dropped dramatically since January.
- According to experts, there are a number of reasons, including declining cases, increased vaccination, and pandemic fatigue.
- They say that people should still get tested even if they’ve been vaccinated, so that they know whether they risk passing the disease to others.
Even as more people in the United States are getting vaccinated for COVID-19, fewer people are getting tested for the novel coronavirus.
The reason for the drop-off in COVID-19 testing is complicated.
But experts say one thing remains clear: Now is not the time to slack off on measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19, including getting tested if you’ve been exposed to someone who’s sick or you’re feeling ill yourself.
Even as testing capacity has risen significantly, the number of new COVID-19 tests administered has fallen drastically over the past 2 months, according to the COVID Tracking Project.
More than 363 million COVID-19 tests have been conducted since the pandemic began 1 year ago. The number of daily tests first topped 1 million on July 24, and they haven’t fallen below 1 million since Oct. 13.
On Jan. 15, more than 2.3 million COVID-19 tests were administered, the most for any single day.
However, after peaking in January, confirmed COVID-19 cases and hospital admissions have been declining. And while testing numbers vary from day to day, the overall trend has been downward.
In January, an average of 1.9 million tests were conducted each day. But that fell to 1.5 million daily tests in February and 1.3 million daily tests in March.
Source: healthline