SEMINOLE COUNTY, Fla. — Seminole County’s COVID-19 positivity rate was over 30 percent for the last week of January, significantly higher than in Orange and Osceola Counties.
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In addition to levels of COVID-19 in an area, the positivity rate can measure the amount of testing being done.
Eric Solomon of Texas A&M University says Seminole County is similar to most other counties when it comes to the prevalence of COVID-19 per person.
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“What you’re going to see is in Orange and Osceola County, you’re seeing more testing, and as a result, lower positivity rates,” Solomon said. “So I believe what we’re really looking at here is a lack of testing.”
According to data collected by Florida Health, Seminole and Sumter Counties are at the bottom of the list in terms of testing per 100,000 people.
Seminole County Emergency Manager Alan Harris says that doesn’t mean Seminole County is doing less testing than others.
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“One of the things we wanted to do here in Seminole County was we wanted to do appointment-only, because we don’t want the lines down the road like we were seeing in other counties,” Harris said. “And we wanted to give out the at-home test kits, so we didn’t have the high demand at the test site. Both of those have seemed to work very effectively.”
Officials say the at-home test kits may be the key to why Seminole County’s COVID-19 positivity rate is higher as the results are rarely sent in to the Florida Department of Health
In all, Harris says Seminole County has given out more than 80,000 at-home test kits since November.
“If you get a negative test result, that doesn’t necessarily go to the health department,” Harris said. “It doesn’t get counted, and therefore the percentage artificially increases.”
Harris says negative results tend to be ignored, but those who get a positive result from an at-home kit may follow-up with a rapid PCR test to verify the results.
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“So there’s probably a lot more actual disease out there, and it’s being reflected in the counts that we’re seeing from the state,” Harris said. “That may be reflected even better in the positivity rates, because people that are really feeling ill probably will be more inclined to get tested.”
Eric Solomon says the virus count doesn’t necessarily equate to hospitalizations, which are going down, but not as fast as the actual virus rates, indicating that people who have the virus aren’t always being counted.
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