Testing in the United States remains drastically behind testing in other countries, even before figuring in the scale of US population with dwarfs all but a few countries in the world. But it is ramping up. Here is a quick and dirty chart I just compiled with the data from the COVID-19 Tracking Project. This is the cumulative number of the number of people tested in the United States as updated each day.
(Click the chart to get a zoomed in version of the image for easier reading.)
A few points on the data. This is data taken directly from the COVID-19 Tracking Project, which we’ve discussed earlier. Their data drawn is directly from individual states and in some cases counties on a daily basis (their explanation of their process). Not all states are reporting the data. And they’re not all reporting it in the same way. It is likely the number for today will still go up. So the individual numbers shouldn’t be seen as absolutes but rather the most accurate counts we currently have available. But they are solid in terms of seeing the progression of testing over the last week.
As a point of comparison, the Republic of Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that as of March 12th, 234,998 people have been tested. That is an increase of 12,603 over the number reported yesterday. They have found a total of 7,869 infections; 17,727 tests are in process and 209,402 have returned negative.
Here’s a different look at the data: the growing cumulative number and the number of new tests each day.
