By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — It's important to take the increase in the aggregate numbers of Reno County positive COVID-19 cases in context.
"We can't really rely on one data metric," said Reno County Health Department director Nick Baldetti Friday. "Throughout this duration up to this point, we've been leaning on both as a nation, a state and in some respects, locally, what's our aggregate number, right? How many cases have we had and then obviously how many have recovered?"
Even with seven more positive tests coming back Friday to push the number to 24 as of early Saturday morning, the overall positive test rate to tests administered in Reno County is still good. Friday's numbers had about one of every 20 people who qualified for a test in Reno County testing positive. The state's number is about one in eight.
"We continue to kind of shotgun, if you will, these particular data points, until we have a statistically significant sample of testing to be able to draw from that we can make better inferences from," Baldetti said. "That continues to be the challenge throughout the duration of this entire response."
The other thing is, if there are disease carriers out there, and this appears to be the case, who are infected, but not sick enough to need a doctor's care, then it's likely they won't get tested. There is also a segment of the population that wouldn't want to be tested regardless because of a desire not to give their DNA information to someone else, so even the best numbers we can get will be incomplete.