*THREAD*

No, Texas's (true) percentage of people testing positive for #COVID19 has not shot up.

No, Texas's Covid-19 testing has not dropped off a cliff.

#Texas's reporting is screwed up based on how it's treating its backlog of "pending" cases...

Lately, many have wondered what's happening in Texas. Texas's daily average for Covid-19 tests was consistently above 60K for the last couple weeks in July, per @COVID19Tracking's data.

As of yesterday? Below 30K, with 3 of the last 4 days coming in below 16K.

What did happen?

Texas started clearing its backlog of cases "Pending Assignment" is what happened.

I knew something was up with the testing when I saw the numbers dropping noticeably in my daily data update. Then @JTUGS pointed me to this thread by @therealarod1984: https://twitter.com/therealarod1984/status/1292636103577657345?s=20

What's happening in Texas is simple: each of Texas's 254 counties reports testing numbers daily. For months, a good chunk of these tests went into a category called "Pending Assignment." That category kept building up until it finally reached 1.13M on July 31.

Here's the link to Texas's spreadsheet: https://dshs.texas.gov/coronavirus/TexasCOVID-19CumulativeTestsOverTimebyCounty.xlsx

Now, Texas is clearing these out. I don't know if these are getting reallocated to older days, or tossed out, or what. What I do know is they are reducing the numbers, test-for-test, from the *current* day's number.

Take yesterday, for example. If you look at the county-level testing, there was an increase of 144,133 tests (including sero and antigen, which have made up only ~7.5% of total testing in TX).

How many PCR tests did TX report yesterday? 15,202.

Is it possible some of these cleared "Pending" cases are being allocated to current testing numbers? Sure. But nobody has any idea how many (if any).

Any amount thrown out or that don't get allocated for whatever reason are *automatically* deducted from the current day's total.

What irks me is people (including journalists, medical professionals, etc.) uncritically seeing yesterday's 64% positive percentage in Texas and saying, "Wow, Texas is out of control--get ready for the hospital/death surge!"

Come on. You've got two eyes and a working brain...

I mean, here's the Covid hospitalization data in Texas. Obviously the trend shows improvement. To try and square this with an alarmist "25%+ of those tested in Texas are positive" strikes me as disingenuous at best.

On the bright side, Texas has come down from 1.13M to 454K of these pending tests in the last 10 days, so we might be getting better data in another week or so if they keep up the same pace.

In the short-term, Texas's testing data will continue to be erratic, unreliable, and almost certainly far lower than the actual number.

Take it (and those who report it uncritically) with a massive grain of salt.