FIGURES from the Centers for Disease Control that states use to make decisions about reopening are useless, experts say.

The CDC has been conflating the results of viral and antibody tests, it confirmed to The Atlantic, distorting crucial data about the spread of COVID-19.

Ashish Jha, the K. T. Li Professor of Global Health at Harvard and the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, said the situation is a “mistake” and a “mess”.

Viral tests are done by a nose swab or saliva sample to determine if a person is currently sick, while antibody tests are taken by a blood sample to see if they have ever had COVID-19.

Antibody tests tend to have a lower percent-positive rate than viral tests, Jha explained, because they are for the general population, while viral tests are for people showing symptoms or likely to have been exposed to COVID-19.

So combining the results of the two “will drive down your positive rate in a very dramatic way” and make the metrics “uninterpretable”.

“The viral testing is to understand how many people are getting infected, while antibody testing is like looking in the rearview mirror. The two tests are totally different signals.”

It means many more Americans could be sick with the virus than the CDC says, and that governors could be in the dark as they make decisions about reopening.

Some, but not all, states are following the CDC’s lead and lumping the data from the two different tests together. Pennsylvania, Texas, Georgia and Vermont all confirmed to The Atlantic they were treating the results this way.

A spokesperson for the CDC told The Atlantic they would separate the two different metrics in the coming weeks.

It comes as all 50 states have eased restrictions, after stay-at-home orders were implemented across the US as the outbreak hit the US hard in March.

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