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Which Countries and U.S. States are Safest in Terms of Coronavirus? A good barometer is the percentage of Covid-19 tests that are positive, since this helps get at the issue that some countries and states are not undertaking sufficient testing. A locale that isn't testing much but has significant community spread will have a high Covid-19 positivity percentage; one that is heavily testing its population will have a lower positivity percentage.
Another reason why the coronavirus positivity rate is important is that low rates, around 1.5%, are associated with successful reopenings following lock downs. For example, prior to lockdown, Spain's positivity rate was 28% and Italy's was 25%. After lockdown, both were under 1.5% and remain low: Spain as of July 9 was at 1.4%, and Italy is at 0.8%.
Top 10 U.S. States (Low Covid-19 Test Positivity) as of 7/17/20
- Maine: 0.76%
- Connecticut: 0.77%
- Vermont: 0.84%
- New York: 1.16%
- New Jersey: 1.41%
- Washington, DC: 1.63%
- New Hampshire: 1.86%
- Hawaii: 1.93%
- Massachusetts: 2.22%
- Michigan: 2.78%
During its March peak, NYC had a >70% test positivity rate; as of 7/14, that percentage was 1%.
To put the above states into perspective, currently the worst states for Covid-19 test positivity are Arizona (22.8%); Florida (18.1%); South Carolina (17.6%); Nevada (17.1%); and Texas (16.1%). Individual counties of course can be much better or worse. As of July 10, Miami-Dade reported test positivity of 33.5%.
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Top 10 Countries in Europe (Low Covid-19 Test Positivity) as of 7/17/20
- Finland: 0.1%
- Lithuania: 0.1%
- Denmark: 0.2%
- Norway: 0.2%
- Ireland: 0.3%
- Latvia: 0.3%
- Germany: 0.5%
- Hungary: 0.5%
- UK: 0.6%
- Greece: 0.7%
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Top 10 Countries in Asia and Pacific (Low Covid-19 Test Positivity) as of 7/17/20
- Vietnam: 0%
- China: 0%
- New Zealand: 0.1%
- Malaysia: 0.1%
- Taiwan: 0.2%
- Myanmar: 0.2%
- Thailand: 0.3%
- Australia: 0.4%
- South Korea: 0.5%
- Singapore: 0.9%
What's the Covid-19 test positivity rate where you live?
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Interesting to see how significantly New York’s coronavirus positivity rate has fallen, and how much Florida’s has risen. What is Iceland’s positivity rate now?
Yes; New York and NYC have come a long way since March-April. It certainly wasn’t perfect though–there were so many needless deaths in nursing homes and senior care facilities. The tragedy is that some other states have not taken to heart lessons learned in New York, leading to additional unnecessary hospitalizations and deaths. Surprisingly, Iceland isn’t even close to being among the top European countries now when it comes to test positivity rate; currently it’s 4.1%, well above most other European countries and close to Sweden, which is at 4.3%