MA Coronavirus: State Needs To Increase Testing To Safely Reopen

BOSTON — Massachusetts would need to conduct 30,000 coronavirus tests per day to safely lift orders on social distancing and businesses closures after May 1, according to a study released Monday.

That's more than double than the 14,614 the state conducted on April 23, its most active day of testing. On Monday, the state conducted 8,787 tests for the new coronavirus, bringing the total number of tests to 244,887.

Massachusetts averaged 6,920 daily tests for the week ended April 22. Nationally, there were 1.6 million tests conducted last week — a number that would need to be doubled, according to the researchers.

The analysis by Harvard researchers and STAT is the first look at coronavirus testing that drills down beyond the national testing rate and looks at state testing rates. In addition to Massachusetts, 3o other states and the District of Columbia would need to significantly increase testing rates before they can safely reopen.

"You can’t just take the national number and scale it to states by their population," said Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. "You have to base it on the size of the outbreak in a state."

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The study said Massachusetts would need to be conducting 29,999 daily tests by May 1 to begin lifting measures aimed at slowing the spread of the new coronavirus. Gov. Charlie Baker has said he will offer details later this week on whether he will lift the state's emergency order scheduled to expire May 4. Boston Mayor Marty Walsh said Monday his city will not be ready to reopen May 4.

"Whatever decision is made needs to have planning and thought behind it," Baker said.

Jha said the study used a "best-case scenario" in its analysis. "We tried to come up with numbers that wouldn’t make governors gag," he said. Of the states bordering Massachusetts, only Vermont is currently conducting enough daily tests.

Read the full study on STAT News.

More Coronavirus Coverage On Massachusetts Patch:

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• Coronavirus Case Counts For Every Massachusetts Town

Dave Copeland writes for Patch and can be reached at dave.copeland@patch.com or by calling 617-433-7851. Follow him on Twitter (@CopeWrites) and Facebook (/copewrites).