According to a statement on Thursday by a UPMC doctor, fewer people are now testing positive for COVID-19. Those who have confirmed to be positive with the virus doesn’t seem to be very sick at all.
This has been observed in western and central Pennsylvania, with some communities in Maryland and New York that are also served by the UPMC. UPMC hospitals have discharged around 500 people who have been admitted for COVID-19. Currently, they are only treating 100.
Dr. Donald Yearly, the chair for emergency medicine at UPMC said that “All signs that we have available right now show that this virus is less prevalent than it was weeks ago,”
Yearly also noted that the proportion of people with COVID-19 getting sick and required breathing ventilators has also dropped. “We see all of this as evidence that COVID-19 cases are less severe than when this first started,” he said.
About 30,000 COVID-19 tests were done, with less than 4% showing positive. UPMC has tested about 8,000 patients who don’t have any symptoms, with those that are COVID-19 positive at a rate of about 1 to 400. He said that this information suggests the widely-feared prospect of getting COVID-19 from someone with no symptoms is unlikely.
Yealy also said he doesn’t know precisely why the prevalence and severity of COVID-19 seem to have fallen. It could likely reflect on certain factors like weather, genetic changes in the virus, people watching themselves more closely for symptoms, and better safety and health procedures.
