August 25 – Oregon Health Authority released its Weekly Testing Report today, which showed that as of August 22, Oregon’s cumulative positive testing rate is 4.5 percent of people tested. This is considerably lower than the national average of 9 percent. Of the 24,177 people tested the week of Aug. 16-22, 1,233 (5.1%) were positive. The total for that week is likely to rise as test results continue to be reported to OHA. It is reassuring that test positivity is relatively stable, which suggests that the number of people newly infected with COVID-19 each week is no longer increasing rapidly.
Data note: In last week’s Testing Summary, OHA reported 25,646 tests performed in the week of Aug. 9–15. As results have continued to be reported to OHA, in today’s summary the total for that week has risen to 33,009. Such lags are expected as OHA is now publishing testing data by the date on which specimens were collected. As such, prior weeks’ data are being updated continuously.
