For the last two days, New York State has tested more people for the coronavirus than it ever has.
And both days yielded two of the state's lowest positive rates of the pandemic.
New York recorded more than 87,000 Covid-19 tests statewide on Tuesday and Wednesday. Both days saw a positive rate of 0.8%, the first time that the state had back-to-back days of 0.8% or lower.
The state has seen declining coronavirus numbers for months, with positives hovering around 1% since June.
"New York State continues to stay vigilant in the face of an ongoing crisis across the country as we pursue a phased reopening," Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said in a release. "Yesterday we did a record-high number of tests – which is critical to our cautious, data-driven reopening strategy – and we'll keep closely monitoring the numbers we receive daily."
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On Tuesday, 87,776 tests were reported, with 700 positives yielding a rate of 0.798%.
On Wednesday, 87,900 tests were reported, with 737 positives for a rate of 0.835%.
The state's previous high for tests was 82,737 on July 31.
Prior to this week, the state's daily positive rate had been 0.8% only three other times, including an all-time low of 0.783% on Aug. 8. On the other two occasions, the rates were higher than this week's (both above 0.840%).
By contrast, here are the numbers, per their departments of health, of the three states that in the last month have surpassed New York in total coronavirus cases:
• Texas on Tuesday recorded a positive rate of 24.5% after a total of more than 28,300 tests (both numbers are seven-day averages).
• Florida posted that it had tested 81,100 people on Tuesday, with 11.89% of new cases testing positive.
• California reported 117,188 tests on Tuesday, with a 14-day average rate of positive tests of 6.2%.
The World Health Organization has advised governments that coronavirus rates should be 5% or lower for at least 14 days before areas should reopen.
New York also posted its lowest number of coronavirus intubations (56) Wednesday since mid-March, while there were 10 fatalities.
Western New York's coronavirus positive rate for Wednesday was 0.7%. Previous days' rates were: 0.5% (Tuesday), 1.3% (Monday) and 0.8% (Sunday).
The state considers Western New York to consist of Erie, Niagara, Chautauqua, Cattaraugus and Allegany counties.
The New York Times on Thursday reported that, nationwide, an average of 706,000 tests per day were performed over the past week, according to data collected by the Covid Tracking Project, which is far below the current nationwide target of 1.5 million daily tests.
The paper also reported that that new coronavirus case numbers remain persistently high across most of the country. On the other hand, the rate of new cases reported have dropped since late July, when the country averaged well over 60,000 new coronavirus cases per day. The Times reported that, because the number of people hospitalized with the virus and the percentage of people testing positive also rose in many states, the summer case spike cannot be solely explained by increased testing.
According to the Times, 54,187 new cases were reported in the United States on Wednesday. There has been an average of 53,811 cases per day over the past week, which is a decrease of 17 percent from the average two weeks prior.
As of Thursday afternoon, more than 5,247,400 people across the country have been infected with the coronavirus and at least 166,700 have died, according to a New York Times database.
Staff reporter Harold McNeil contributed to this story.
