Pritzker Finally Ditches 'Unreliable' COVID Test Positivity Rate

CHICAGO — The "unreliable," "non-scientifically founded" and "almost meaningless" pandemic statistic that guided Gov. J.B. Pritzker's coronavirus response has finally been dropped as a policymaking metric by the Illinois Department of Public Health.

And it's about time.

COVID-19 test positivity rates have been the backbone of the Pritzker administration's decisions on when to ban in-person learning and indoor dining, limit public gathering sizes and order mask-wearing mandates, among other things.

This week, Illinois' interim top non-medical doctor unceremoniously announced in a news release that the state would no longer publicly report test positivity, to match a policy change the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made more than a month ago.

“Test and case positivity rates were seen as a good way to monitor the level of community spread early in the pandemic,” IDPH Acting Director Amaal Tokars said.

Which, technically, was true for about a month in 2020.

The World Health Organization, on April 16, 2020, recommended that a positivity rate of less than 5 percent was a benchmark threshold for lifting social distance restrictions.

It didn't take American scientists long to figure out test positivity wasn't an effective metric for guiding a public health response to the coronavirus crisis.

As I've reported, Pritzker's administration has known that since May 9, 2020.

In a confidential report obtained by Patch, the state's coronavirus Epi-Modeling Task Force made this recommendation: "Changes in the total number of test-positive cases or the fraction testing positive are an unreliable measure of shifts. These numbers should not be used to determine policy."

Pritzker's administration ignored that advice.

In October 2020, University of Chicago associate professor Sarah Cobey — an epidemiologist, mathematical ecologist and evolutionary biologist with a Princeton pedigree — led an effort aimed at predicting when and under what conditions Illinoisans might return to work, to restaurants and to schools as the pandemic raged on.

Cobey said told the Belleville News Democrat that she had advised the Pritzker administration against determining pandemic policy based on test positivity "and basically all the metrics they've put forth so far because they are not scientifically founded," Cobey said.

The scientist said the Pritzker administration balked at using her team's more-accurate models because: "It's too complicated. People won't like it."

"They're pretty adamant that actual science is too much," the world-renowned epidemiologist told the newspaper.

Pritzker's administration ignored Cobey, too.

The COVID Tracking Project stopped publishing test positivity rates in October 2020 because "test positivity in the U.S. is a mess." In an October blog post, its team of experts "emphatically recommend against over-reliance on test positivity calculations to justify changes in public health responses or policies."

But it wasn't until Tuesday that the Pritzker administration decided to ditch test positivity as a marker for state coronavirus mandates.

The decision comes at a time when, regardless of tests positivity rates or any other coronavirus metrics, Pritzker's administration is not considering reinstating any pandemic mandates.

At least not during this point in an election year, even as the rolling average of daily coronavirus cases continues to increase.

“We are not discussing a mandate at this time. But we don’t know what the future will be,” Tokars told Shaw Newspapers. “At this time, we are really wanting to educate people on actions they could and should take.”

Now, Illinois public health officials are monitoring case rates, coronavirus hospitalizations, intensive care bed availability and COVID-19-related deaths.

Tokars says that now, with vaccines and COVID-19 therapeutic drugs — which have been available for more than a year and didn't prevent a spike in omicron variant cases — unreliable test positivity metrics that triggered two rounds of Pritzker's coronavirus shutdowns will no longer be a bellwether for Illinois' pandemic response.

Finally, Pritzker's politics have caught up to science.

Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting, wrote and produced the Peabody Award-winning series "Time: The Kalief Browder Story." He was a producer, writer and narrator for the "Chicagoland" docuseries on CNN and a consulting producer on the Showtime documentary "16 Shots.

Read More From Mark Konkol:

• Pure Joy Is A White Sox Home Opener Win Served With A Rainbow Cone
• After 2nd DUI, Time For Rep. Buckner To Move On From Mayoral Ambitions
• Chicago Mayoral Race Will Be Theatrical With 'Ald. Showpez' In Running
• Pritzker Funds, Hides Behind Democratic Governors Association Attacks
• Laugh Or Your Money Back: WGN's Pat Tomasulo's Free Comedy Special