OU Medicine Enterprise Quality Director Dale Bratzler answered questions Wednesday about the current COVID-19 pandemic, the increase in infections in Oklahoma, and the effects of mask mandates.
The Oklahoma State Department of Health reported 848 new positive cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday, bringing the total number of infections to 34,623 since the start of the pandemic.
The state also reported 14 additional deaths Wednesday, bringing the Oklahoma total to 523.
Bratzler started his question and answer session by giving a breakdown of the results of recent tests.
Bratzler: In the past seven days, we’ve seen more than 6,500 confirmed new cases in Oklahoma and a seven-day average of about 937 cases on average each day. On Monday, the State Department of Health provided the results of 22,092 different tests, of which 13.5% were positive, that’s a new record, and I’ve never seen the state number reach 13.5%. In the past two weeks we have seen fluctuations in rates: about 10% of all tests have been positive.
Is the increase in positive evidence due to increased evidence or increased community outreach?
When you see a higher percentage positive test rate, that means a higher community spread rate. That means that there are more infected people and, therefore, more samples analyzed are really positive. Especially in the last few weeks, we have seen an increase in the number of tests performed and there is a high demand for tests … but remember that in the week of May 25, of all the tests performed that week, only 1.8% of The tests carried out were really positive.
Last week, 10% of tests performed were positive and on Monday 13.5% of tests performed were positive. That simply means that we test more infected people.
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