REPORT COMING UP SHORT
Actual coronavirus cases may be 10 times confirmed number
The 2,417 figure of confirmed cases of coronavirus in Massachusetts does not come close to reflecting the true number of infections in the Bay State, according to infectious disease experts who estimate there are likely 10 times as many cases in the state.
“That’s just a small part of the whole picture,” Maciej Boni of the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics at Pennsylvania State University said of 2,417 confirmed cases.
Only a slight fraction of Massachusetts cases have been confirmed because of restrictive testing, the epidemiologists said. For instance, U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton said he experienced mild coronavirus symptoms and could not receive a test. This lack of testing has been reported around the country.
Only about 10% to 15% of all cases are being captured in the U.S., said Andrew Lover of UMass Amherst’s School of Public Health and Health Sciences. More than 80,000 cases in the U.S. have been confirmed.
That estimate of 10% to 15% is based, in part, on the testing rates of other countries compared to the U.S., Lover said.
“There’s a lot of data in Italy that shows people with mild symptoms can still spread coronavirus easily, so it’s important for those people to be tested,” he said. “You need to see if they have it and minimize their social contacts to slow the spread.”
About 10% of all cases are being reported, said Thomas McAndrew, also at UMass Amherst’s School of Public Health and Health Sciences. He has been aggregating data from experts’ models.
“It looks like tenfold the cases being reported now,” McAndrew said.
“They’re still triaging who to test,” he said.
In Massachusetts, there have been 23,621 tests as of Thursday.
Testing has been prioritized for the priority group and high-risk group — health care workers who are treating suspected coronavirus patients, and people over 60 years old with pre-existing conditions, said Dr. Julita Mir, an infectious diseases physician in Boston.
“We’re seeing people with mild symptoms and those who are asymptomatic trying to get tests, and it’s difficult in the year 2020 to tell somebody that we don’t have the tests available,” said Mir, chief medical officer of Community Care Cooperative.
But they’ve learned to manage other respiratory infections without testing, she noted.
“And as testing becomes more available in the state, more and more people with symptoms will be able to get tested,” Mir said.
A state Department of Public Health spokeswoman said the criteria for testing has changed as tests have become more readily available here.
“At this point, testing for COVID-19 is a clinical decision that can be made by a health care provider who clinically suspects the disease based on the patient’s symptoms and findings,” the spokeswoman said in a statement.
The DPH website states, “If you are a close contact of someone with COVID-19 or you are a resident in a community where there is ongoing spread of COVID-19 and develop symptoms of COVID-19, call your health care provider and tell them about your symptoms and your exposure. They will decide whether you need to be tested, but keep in mind that there is no treatment for COVID-19 and people who are mildly ill may be able to isolate and care for themselves at home.”
Moulton said he’s selfquarantining at home, and is feeling much better.
“It’s absurd that people who are symptomatic can’t even get tests,” Moulton said. “We still don’t have a full understanding of how widespread this is, how much worse it will get, or when it might finally start getting better.”