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Data on COVID-19 (coronavirus) cases, deaths, hospitalizations, tests • All countries • Updated daily by Our World in Data
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About US positive rate in owid-covid-data.csv #207

Closed AnnaNishino closed 3 years ago

AnnaNishino commented 3 years ago

Hello!

I would like to ask about US positive rate at https://github.com/owid/covid-19-data/blob/master/public/data/owid-covid-data.csv. It seems this file has positive rate once a week here from last week. Is this because of Department of Health & Human Services's data itself, or any other reason?\ Thank you!

edomt commented 3 years ago

Hi @AnnaNishino

The positive rate we use for the United States is collected directly from the Weekly Surveillance Summary of U.S. COVID-19 Activity report published weekly by the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention. That's why it only shows data on a weekly basis. A new report has been published by the CDC on Friday, so today's update will add a new data point for the positive rate up to November 28.

Note that it's pretty difficult to calculate a single positive rate for the United States as a whole (which is why we prefer trusting the CDC for its calculation). The COVID Tracking Project recently published a very interesting summary of what makes it so complex: Test Positivity in the US Is a Mess

Ed