The widespread availability of at-home antigen testing in 2022 is known to have resulted in significant undercounting of actual COVID-19 cases across the US. At the same time, oral antivirals, such as Paxlovid, became widely available and CDC recommended that elderly persons testing positive or having COVID-like symptoms seek medical care and access anti-viral treatment – a clinical encounter which would likely involve a confirmatory PCR test. Over the past several months, case incidence rates in county residents 65+ years of age have been considerably higher than those in other age groups, a pattern not observed earlier in the year or throughout 2021. To the extent the higher elderly rates reflect a greater likelihood of receiving a reportable PCR test, they may provide the most accurate measure available for true case incidence in the county. If so, the age-specific trends seen in 2021 and earlier in 2022 suggest that rates in the remainder of the county population, especially young and middle-age adults, may currently be underreported by 2-4 fold.
The take-home message is that the prevalence of COVID-19 infection in the county is likely considerably higher than what public health can measure. Furthermore, the CDC recently announced a switch from daily to weekly COVID-19 case and death reporting, which provides less surveillance capacity as we enter the critical winter cold/flu season, which now looks to be dominated by the highly immune-evasive BQ.1/BQ.1.1 Omicron variants. See HERE
Original source found here.
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